


The Secret

by InsaneSociopath



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Tony, Canon Rewrite, Gen, Gymnastics, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Martial Arts AU, Pepperony - Freeform, mild PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-03-05 12:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 66,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3120119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneSociopath/pseuds/InsaneSociopath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The plan was simple. The plan was brilliant. The plan was concocted by eight year old Tony Stark while lying in a hospital bed. The plan was to master every kind of martial art known to mankind. The plan is also somewhat a huge secret. Even more than thirty years on when he’s suddenly somehow an Avenger and Clint Barton thinks he can get a laugh out sparring with ‘poor incompetent Tony’, The Secret is still…. Well a secret. Poor incompetent Hawkeye is about to get a hell of a shock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm supposed to be working on a godawful report for University.  
> I have been working on it in fact.  
> I also wrote this because it won't leave my head.  
> I've barely even checked it for errors because it's stupid o'clock in the morning and i just want to get it posted now so i can forget about it. I don't even know what's going on with the formatting and linebreaks; they're all over the place! Please be patient with it and I promise to fix it asap!  
> And I should probably mention that all my martial arts knowledge comes from the crazy Bulgarian i used to live in student halls with who was secretly some sort of ninja. We nicknamed him Elmo. As such, feel free to scold me if something is wrong!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: I think I fixed the line break issues and I hope I found all the grammar mistakes and typos. thanks for your patience delightful readers!

Anthony Edward Stark is born on the 29th of May 1970 to Howard and Maria Stark. As soon he’s old enough to understand the concept, he insists his name be shortened to just ‘Tony’. His parents summarily ignore the request. Jarvis ruffles his hair and carries right on calling him Young Master Stark. 

Tony is less than impressed.

\--------------

Tony is only four years old the first time he's kidnapped.

It’s all a bit anticlimactic to be honest.

It takes them two days to do so, but the two men soon realise that Howard Stark really isn't going to pay the ransom demand no matter what they threaten to do to Tony. They sigh in frustration and leave him on a roadside in the middle of nowhere.

Tony shrugs and ambles down the road to the gas station he'd seen out of the car window not five minutes before. He goes to the pay phone outside and dials 911.

The police show up, act surprised that a four year old can work a payphone ( _They can't? Only babies can't use such basic simple technology surely?_ ) ask him a load of dumb questions and then finally take him home. Howard waves the police away, scowls at him, buys the press' silence and drunkenly slurs at anyone nearby about how useless his son is that he let himself get kidnapped. Apparently Maria hadn't even noticed Tony was gone. 

Jarvis had though and he takes Tony down to the kitchens, hugs him and tells him that he's proud of him for being so brave and so clever. Tony shrugs again and says it wasn't so bad; they gave him a screwdriver and let him play with their old radio and gave him lots of candy. Almost like a vacation Jarvis, only better because there was more candy.

Jarvis looks sad at that so Tony smiles and drags him upstairs to look at the latest robot that he made for his daddy. Tony's robots always cheer Jarvis up even if they're never good enough for daddy.

\--------------

By his fourth kidnapping, when he's seven, Tony is beginning to wonder what all the fuss is about. 

After that first time, Jarvis had made Tony read a load of information about hostage situations and made him memorise what he's supposed to do and say to people who take him.

Tony thinks it's all rather pointless because none of that violence stuff ever actually happens.

People will take him, leave him in a corner or a car's backseat, tell him to be quiet while they demand money from his father and then leave him somewhere random when they work out they're not going to see a single penny.

Tony finds a phone, he rings the police, he gets himself home. His dad is angry at him, his mom is oblivious and Jarvis is relieved. 

Same old, same old Tony tells himself as he's driven back to boarding school the next morning.

\-------------

He's eight and there's a chair and ropes and a lit cigarette that burns. The cheap vodka that they pour over his face stings his eyes and he silently vows to pay attention to each and every one of Jarvis' defence techniques from now on. 

\---------------------

He hasn't even been released from the hospital yet and he's already convinced (an admittedly reluctant) Jarvis of the awesomeness of his plan. Jarvis will sort everything with school and stop dad from finding out.

\-------------------------------------------

His resolve is wavering a little by the end of the first week. The fancy ass boarding school his dad insisted he attend already enforces ridiculously early wake-up times. Now he's being dragged out of bed an entire two hours earlier every morning.

And then all the instructor guy (Sensei he learns _very_ quickly, is the correct term) has him doing is listening to lectures on self-discipline and standing around in ridiculous poses.

Then he remembers the sound of matches striking and the sharp hiss of burning tobacco pressed down on flesh and tells himself to grit his teeth and concentrate.

If standing on one leg with his arms out results in him being as good at self-defence as the two guys his dad eventually sent to rescue him, then he'll stand on that one leg until it falls off.

\----------------------

He's nine and after a year he's learnt hundreds of different ways to punch and kick and block and he can do more press ups in a row than he thinks is healthy for someone his age. He doesn't tell anybody that, least of all Sensei who would probably just tell him to stop whining and make him do even more. 

Press ups aside, Tony thinks he's quite good at this Karate stuff now. He particularly likes the nunchucks, so he asks if they can start on some Ninjitisu so that he can use those big wooden stave things he'd read about last week (Bo-staffs?)

The answer is no, but he has more luck convincing Sensei to start on Judo. He's really looking forward to learning all those throwing and grappling moves. Well, he is right up until he's thrown over Sensei's shoulder anyway.

He lies still until his head stops throbbing and decides that he really needs to work on his flexibility. He thinks back to his school sports lesson last week and grins at the great idea he's just had.

That night he completes his calculus homework twice as fast as usual so that he's got time to sneak into the reception office and ring home.

"Jarvis," he says as soon as his family butler answers "I need a gymnastics coach."

\-----------------

He’s twelve and the latest group of idiots who decide to kidnap him don’t even get him as far their car before he’s escaped. The group of policemen who question him about the incident never do manage to get a good explanation out of him. Instead, they’re left to wonder how a single preteen took down four armed men and left them chained up unconscious in their own handcuffs forever more.

Years later, when Tony finds an old copy of the police report, he’s amused when all it says is ‘sheer dumb luck’.

At the time, all Tony thinks is _well, this is working out better than expected._

\-----------------

He’s just graduated high school. He’s only thirteen.

His father demands to know why it’s taken him this long. _You’re a Stark, you useless spoilt brat, you should have finished school years ago! What the hell were they teaching you at that pathetic excuse for a school? Waste of goddamn money, that’s what that place was. And a goddamn waste of space is what you are. You’ll never be even a tenth the man Captain Rogers was! You’re pathetic._

As per usual, his mother doesn’t even register his existence, let alone his achievement. 

When Tony tells Jarvis, he’s awestruck and so proud he cries and pulls him against his chest in a rib-crushing hug. It’s the best hug he’s ever experienced.

Something deep inside Tony breaks, and ‘Mother and Father’ become ‘Maria and Howard’.

Jarvis cries even harder when Tony calls him Dad for the first time. 

He cries for a completely different reason when Tony goes to his room and rips down every single one of his Captain America posters. 

\-----------------

He’s still thirteen and at MIT working towards a Masters in engineering when he realises just how thorough Jarvis has been with his martial arts and gymnastics secret. A grand total of six people at his old boarding school had known and they’d now all been bribed and legally bound into secrecy; apparently everyone else just thought he was a bit of a health nut who liked running and occasionally lifting weights. With the considerably more lax scheduling and timetabling that comes with going to College, the only people who knew now were his gym coaches, both of his Sensei, the guy who makes sure the small gymnasium is empty on a morning and lets them in, and Jarvis and Tony themselves. 

He probably should be used to it now, but Tony is honestly more than a little impressed with Jarvis’ efficiency. 

\-----------------

It’s the morning after his fourteenth birthday and he swears to god he’s never drinking again. He’d always hated it when Howard was drunk and even more verbally abusive than usual, so the only time he’d had any alcohol before now was that one time Howard had pushed a glass of expensive scotch into his ten-year-old hands and told him to ‘drink up and starting acting like a real man’.

He’d hated alcohol then, and with the way he currently feels, he hates it even more now. How the hell was he supposed to concentrate on his Kata practice when his head was pounding like this? He didn’t even want to think about how all those flips and tumbles he was going to have to do in gymnastics later. His stomach was rebelling just fine on its own without the added help.

But he does think he’ll try and find that guy from last night again. Rodney? Rhodey? Ricky? Something like that. Whoever he was, he’d treated Tony like an equal instead of just a spoilt little rich boy who was only at MIT because of ‘Daddy’s money and influence’. He’d quite liked being treated with respect and he really ought to find the guy to say thank you at the very least. 

He groaned when he realised that Sensei was reprimanding him for not paying attention for the fourth time that morning, and went back to stepping through his _Gojū Shiho._

He really was never, _ever_ drinking again. 

\-----------------

Turns out, James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes is just as awesome as he thought he would be. He really didn’t give a damn who Tony’s parents were, or what being a Stark was supposed to mean. He just liked Tony for being Tony. In fact the only thing that wasn’t so great about him was his strong desire to join the Army. Or the Air Force to be more exact. But there’s no talking the man into swaying away from his dream job, so they simply avoid discussing it and get right on with being best friends. 

Which is why, exactly four weeks before his fifteenth birthday, it’s Rhodey’s room he’s hiding in while he wonders exactly what the hell he’s supposed to do about the latest bout of campus rumours.

Apparently only being fourteen is not enough to stop people from jumping to all sorts of horrendous conclusions over his strolling back to his own room, tired and sweat drenched, nearly every morning. He’s actually been returning from his usual morning training and sparring sessions, but he’s _Tony Stark_ so _of course_ he must be getting overly friendly with his female colleagues and having to do regular ‘walks of shame’. He’s still too young to drive for crying out loud, but sure guys, sounds perfectly reasonable.

Naturally, his ‘wild and slutty nature’ must also mean he’s a raging alcoholic with zero respect for authority. Oh, and he’s totally flacking all of his classes and poor Howard Stark is having to pay out thousands of dollars in bribes to prevent him from being kicked out of college. No you’re right guys, his perfect record of straight A+’s has absolutely nothing to do with all the work and effort he puts into his studies around his training and workouts. It’s all Howard, all of it. 

Oh man, is he pissed. 

When he eventually summons the courage to call Jarvis and tell him what’s going on, he’s less than impressed too. 

“Goodness gracious me! What are we going to do Young Master Stark?”

No clue, Jarvis, not one clue.

\-----------------

It takes six months before Tony decides that ‘to hell with it’ is the best way of dealing with the opinions of the press and the general public. He’s got Rhodey and Jarvis and it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. Howard is predictably disgusted with his ‘behaviour’, but then Howard is always disgusted with him. Tony never sees him anyway so sod him.

He learns how to act like an asshole, how to throw around innuendo’s like that best of them, and how to be a pro at faking drunkenness (he really had meant it when he said he was never drinking again). He learns that the best way to get people to leave him alone is to go straight on the verbal offensive before they can even open their mouths.

He also learns all about the wonders that are temporary hair dye and coloured contact lenses. Oh and between his own and Jarvis’ expertise, they rustle up a handful of fake identities too. 

The only thing that’s not great about competing in both gymnastics and martial arts competitions under a false name is that he can’t be too good. He hates having to hold back to protect his secret. If he ends up too much in the limelight, there’s a small possibility someone might eventually connect him with that ‘spoilt lazy child genius at MIT’. _A very small_ possibility, but he’s still rather not take the risk; if Howard ever found out about his extracurricular activities, he could wave goodbye to ever doing them again.

More importantly, Howard would find out about all the help Jarvis has given him over the years. And he’d never willingly subject his dad to Howard’s wrath. 

\-----------------

Fifteen is how old he is when Obadiah Stane introduces himself to Tony as Howard’s business partner. Tony thinks the introduction is funny because Obadiah has been Howard’s business partner for as long as Tony’s lived; he’s known all about Obadiah and who he is for his entire life. 

He decides Obadiah isn’t so bad once he hands over a whole bunch of Howard’s blueprints and asks him, rather politely, to check them over. He becomes Obie, when, after the third time this occurs, he commends him for all his excellent work and declares Tony to be twice the genius that Howard is. 

He never does explain to Obie why he was laughing though. 

\-----------------

His ninth kidnapping goes about as well as can be expected for the kidnappers. Word must get round that he’s not an easy target after that, because nobody tries again for the entire time he’s at college.

Or maybe he was just lucky.

It didn’t really matter to be honest. 

Because Rhodey says it best:

“Stark,” he says, “You. Are a complete ninja Badass.”

“I know man!” Is Tony’s only reply.

\-----------------

Once he’s learnt to show the world the arrogant know-it-all Tony Stark they want to see, there’s only one other major hiccup during the rest of his college years.

It’s nearly the end of the academic year and he’s seventeen and still no one has worked out exactly what he’s doing when he disappears on both weekdays and during weekends (competitions galore) so that’s all fine; they just figure he’s off on another bender. And his professors finally seem to have realised that yes, he really is a genius, and yeah, he actually does know more than you do. It’s probably going to take them a little while longer before they also stop being irrationally jealous of him for it, but at least they don’t question his every idea and decision anymore. The students too, seem more accepting of him now that he older and considerably closer to their own ages. 

And ever since that time that some total wanker had broken into his locker and stolen his gym bag and he’d been forced to walk across campus from the pool to his apartment in naught but his swimming trunks, people have stop constantly questioning why girls fawn over him and declare him to be gorgeous. Until then (and most of the time afterwards too), he’d made a point of always wearing long sleeved t-shirts or a jacket when out in public, not wanting to draw attention to his admittedly ripped physique; it was after all, just one more thing that people might accidently associate with The Secret. But yeah, the problem wasn’t with girls.

The problem was with a boy. The Boy.

Now Tony is neither dumb nor blind, and he’s very definitely a teenager. And with the multitude of rumours and apparent ‘truths’ that come with being Tony Stark, he’s very much aware of his own body and it’s occasional desires. 

Once he’s seventeen, he figures he’s old enough to start maybe considering actually indulging them; seventeen is after all, above age of consent in the state of Massachusetts. So if he came across someone he liked, he’d spend a bit of time getting to know them and if, after at least a week (no really, _at least_ a week. Despite all the rumours, he wasn’t actually a playboy) they were amenable to taking things a step further, then he was all for it. 

But being famous and all, he really should have anticipated the twat with the video camera. Still, he waved it off, nothing major. The girl involved wasn’t hugely bothered and the fresh wave of rumours about him weren’t actually anything new. Maybe the accompanying pictures were, but after a two hour rant over the phone with Jarvis and a night spent curled up on Rhodey’s couch, he was good to go. 

(Even if the number of random strangers who kept on commenting on and ‘complimenting’ his flexibility after that, was frankly, more than a little creepy. He was still good to go)

No, The Boy came after that. The Boy came after Tony had worked out that while he liked girls plenty, he liked boys more. The Boy was important enough to warrant capitalisation because he ended up threatening the integrity of The Secret. And this happened because The Boy was the one Howard Stark found out about.

After that first video camera incident, Tony had learnt to be careful about when and where he let himself become involved in trysts. This was made infinitely easier by the fact that everyone always wrongly assumed he was always excessively drunk and would therefore flaunt himself and his activities in full view of the world. 

Apparently he wasn’t careful enough with The Boy. 

Of course Howard saw the photos. That’s just the way the world works isn’t it? And of course this was apparently damaging enough to Howard’s reputation for him to suddenly remember that he actually had a son. 

It was the one and only time Howard hit him. He only managed it because Tony was so shocked that he’d actually shown up at college to let his anger be known, that Tony had barely even twitched when the bottle was swung at his face. Howard didn’t land the second hit. Tony’s ingrained reactions were far too good for that. He was only glad that he’d automatically gone with an Aikido move and thus had done no damage to Howard and that Howard had been near staggering drunk and would more than likely remember nothing of it in the morning.

Still, it was far too close a call. 

Rhodey dealt with Howard, depositing the sodden man in a cheap motel room for the night. Tony sat in his bedroom and quietly had a panic attack while hoping to dear god that Howard really was too drunk to remember anything come morning. 

\-----------------

It’s the morning after and Howard doesn’t remember. Thank god. 

Oh, and he ended up needing four stitches just above his eyebrow. Which was kind of a blow because graduation was in less than a week and the press would doubtlessly be swarming all over the place. 

Just great. Photos with stiches.

\-----------------

Jarvis comes to his graduation. Howard and Maria do not. 

Over the four years he’s been at MIT, Tony has earned two separate Masters Degrees. Engineering has been his primary focus but he’d picked up a physics Masters at the start of his third year too. Just because he was bored and he could. He graduates with full marks in both.

Jarvis also stays the next day and watches Tony do his Grandmaster grading for Wing Chun. And if this was his sixth black belt equivalent in only nine years? Well Tony _had_ said he was a Genius already.

\-----------------

The week after Graduation is the worst week of his entire life by far. 

He could never have anticipated the car crash. 

He only goes to Howard and Maria’s funeral because Obadiah insists.

He goes to Jarvis’ because nobody could have stopped him if they tried. 

Thankfully it’s a completely private ceremony and everybody there knows why Tony calls Jarvis his father. He doesn’t think he could explain it if he tried. Jarvis just was. 

When it comes to the reading of Wills, both the Father that’s responsible for his birth and the one that actually raised him have left him everything they ever owned. Even taking the multi-million dollar corporation into consideration, Tony knew exactly which set of possessions he’d rather have. 

\-----------------

When he finally gets back to his apartment he locks all the doors. He doesn’t let anyone in and he doesn’t let anyone see him break down.

\-----------------

Rhodey breaks in a week later and finds him slumped over a desk in the workshop under his apartment, passed out from exhaustion with severe dehydration. 

It’s worth the scolding he gets from both Rhodey and Obie and the Hospital Doctors because DUM-E is hands down, the best thing he’s ever built. Even more so when he realises he’s fucked the little-guys coding up and he has a multitude of character defects. 

They all just mean he matches his creator perfectly. 

\-----------------

Howard’s Will insists that he cannot take over the running of the company until he’s twenty-one. That means he has four years of freedom remaining. He leaves the running of Stark Industries to Obie, helps Rhodey move all his stuff back to his mom’s and waves him off on the start his military career, and goes back to collecting academic achievements. And training of course. He’d never dishonour Jarvis’s memory by stopping now. 

Jarvis wouldn’t have wanted him to give it up.

\-----------------

At twenty-one, he’s a CEO. He has four degrees, two PhDs and more martial arts qualifications than most professional MMA fighters. He’s secretly a gymnastics prodigy and openly a mathematical genius. He has more money than he knows what to do with and just designed and built his own mansion in Malibu. He also has a healthy appreciation for decent rock and metal music. He sorely misses Jarvis and he doesn’t see Rhodey anywhere near often enough as he would like, but he figures life is pretty good.

Or he would, if he didn’t have this totally bullshit reputation to maintain. 

He’s also non too keen on making all these weapons, but he’s good at it, it keeps Obie happy, and Rhodey beams like the cat who got the canary whenever he shows him his latest prototype, so he figures he can live with it. 

He really hates being called an arrogant, drunken, reckless playboy though. Especially since he still doesn’t drink, he really doesn’t sleep round all that much, and he’s very much aware he has self-confidence issues. Rhodey thinks it’s hilarious. Obie still believes the lie.

After reading a particularly judgemental and extremely depressing article about his apparent personality and way with women, he shuts himself in his brand new workshop for over two weeks and goes on what Rhodey calls a ‘science bender’.

Once he’s shaken off the worst of his misery, the result is J.A.R.V.I.S.

Tony cries tears of joy the first time he hears Jarvis 2.0 come online.

(He then promptly collapses and has to be rescued by Rhodey and Obie again, but no big deal.)

\-----------------

He isn’t entirely sure how he meets Happy Hogan. He’s vaguely aware that he was walking back from a night out on the town, and that he’d been doing his best to discreetly meet with a guy he’d met in a business meeting a few weeks back. As usual, he hadn’t drunk anything alcoholic, but from the way his head was spinning and his memory of the night is patchy at best, he’s pretty sure his tonic water was somehow spiked. 

When he wakes the following morning, he’s laid out on an unfamiliar couch, in an unfamiliar flat, covered in an uncomfortable number of bruises. At first he thinks he’s somehow been kidnapped yet again. Then a well-muscled gentleman with an equal number of bruises appears, hands him a plate of hash browns and bacon, and asks him if he wants an Advil. After that he’s just confused.

The guy gives his name as Happy, explains that he’s an ex-boxer who’s down on his luck and that last night he’d pulled Tony out of an alleyway where three less than reputable men had been attempting to alleviate him of his wallet. 

Tony thanks him and offers him a job; boxing isn’t really an area he’s focused on before now.

A week later (and three days after Tony’s twenty-fifth) and Mr. Hogun accepts on the condition he also be Tony’s driver. 

Having been driven home by the man after that night, Tony thinks that’s a perfectly reasonable condition. 

\-----------------

A few years of working and boxing with Happy and there’s not much point in revealing The Secret to him; he’s already worked it out. Tony surprises himself by being ok with that.

Obie still doesn’t know. The man has somehow become a sort of protective parental figure, but he still can’t bring himself to tell him. 

He thinks that maybe, he never will.

\-----------------

He doesn’t meet Miss Pepper Potts until the year two-thousand. He’s thirty and he’s instantly smitten. Forget all those guys, this women is amazing. Too bad she’s not interested. He hires her anyway.

Anyone who dares to storm into Tony Stark’s office, waving a can of pepper spray, just to point out an accounting error, definitely deserves a job.

And she totally saved him thirty thousand dollars anyway, simply by noticing his incorrect math. 

And did he mention he was totally smitten yet?

\-----------------

He soon realises the problem is that he just doesn’t know how to separate _Tony Goddamn Stark_ from plain old Tony anymore. He’s so used to having to live by ‘fake it ‘till you make it’ that he just can’t switch off the eccentric media personality. He _still_ fakes drinking and he _still_ fakes being drunk, and he’s got a system by which he can bring home hot women and not actually sleep with them with no one the wiser perfected to a T. But Pepper has no clue what so ever that it’s all just an act and he _just can’t stop vocally being an asshole anymore._

He’s so disgusted with himself that he spends an entire day clambering around his gym equipment and beating the crap out of his wooden dummies, trying his damnedest to forget the world exists. Which means he gets absolutely zero work done. Which in turn means Pepper is less than happy with him. Which also means that Happy is less than happy with him too because he forgets to go to his boxing lesson and accidently leaves the man standing aimlessly in the hallway for over an hour.

Which then means that when Angry Pepper shows up at the mansion needing paperwork signing, she meets Angry Happy there (ha, such a good oxymoron), who then asks J.A.R.V.I.S where Tony is. Which results in J.A.R.V.I.S having to give a non-answer because he’s forbidden from mentioning the gymnasium’s existence. Which then leads Angry Happy to deduce his location from said non-answer and results in Pepper being dragged down to said secret gymnasium. 

Which is why Pepper walks in on her boss doing Double Full Layout Twists off of a spring board. And also how Pepper learns about The Secret. 

Tony is very unhappy with Happy. 

Happy is suitably guilty.

Pepper is still staring at her boss with undisguised awe.

Tony doesn’t know how to react to that.

Somehow it all works out in the end because now Pepper’s his friend rather than just his employee. Apparently, she suddenly realises there’s more to Tony than meets the eye. Tony feels he should probably be insulted by the implications of that but he’s not. Probably because he’s still completely smitten. 

Pepper never tells Obie either.

Tony loves Pepper even more for that. 

\-----------------

In May 2009, Afghanistan happens.

Tony is thirty eight. 

Apparently all the martial arts training in the world can’t save him from shrapnel to the chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I really do promise to edit this!  
> And wow, is there is a distinct lack of actual dialougue in there :O


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a terrible habit of writing excessively long author notes, so I'll try and keep most of my rambling confined to the end notes.
> 
> That being said, hello and welcome to Iron Man 1! I haven't actually altered it much from the film, but there's lots of little changes and extras here and there.
> 
> Enjoy!

As he said, he’s thirty-eight when Afghanistan happens.

He hadn’t even wanted to go in the first place. Obie had talked him into it, saying that they needed the good PR after his stunt at the annual UCLA Medical Group Foundation gala. Tony damn well knew that it hadn’t been his fault, but there was no way to prove that without admitting he was only faking being drunk. So he bows his head and trundles off like a good little boy. 

He starts listening to his rebellious side a little more after that monumental mistake. 

\-------------

A few days before they left, Rhodey had gotten mad with Tony because he hadn’t bothered to show up to collect his latest award while they were in Las Vegas. He had in fact, fully planned on actually collecting it. Right up until the moment he found out about their Howard-centric presentation. He’d decided to steer clear after that. 

He’d been so angry with Rhodey for not bloody well working out why he skipped out, that he’d had a temporary lapse in judgement and actually slept with the blonde reporter that he brought home. (Carrie? Christine? God, he can’t even remember her name. How awful is that?)

Then he decided to be deliberately late to the airstrip. He was well aware that it was a petty, childish revenge technique but he couldn’t help the desire to wind up Rhodey. So there he was, fiddling with one of his cars, ignoring the time when Pepper comes down to chivvy him up. Which is when he had found out that it was her birthday. This of course, had made him feel absolutely awful and horrendously guilty. He was used to forgetting birthdays, did it all the time, but this was _Pepper’s._

And just to make matters worse, she had apparently anticipated his forgetfulness and bought herself a birthday present. Yeah, he’d felt guilty alright. 

Still not done getting back at his best friend, when he’d finally gotten to the airstrip and gotten on the plane, he’d gone out of his way to get Rhodey completely hammered on saké during the flight. Meaning that the airman would be forced to deal with a horrendous hangover the entire trip. 

He really wishes he’d given up digging at his best friend when it came to the ride back to the airbase though. He really, really wishes he had. Because it turns out, the fun-vee really wasn’t that fun at all. 

It’s the 15th May and now he’s lying in the desert sand, blood seeping through his Kevlar. He spends his last conscious moments sorely wishing that the last things they had said to each other weren’t said out of spite.

And promising himself that if he miraculously survives this, he’ll never forget Pepper’s birthday ever again. 

\------------

There are vague memories of men and sand in his mouth. Of blood and screams and strange languages. Of flickering lights and rough hands. Of begging for death.

He wishes Pepper were here.

\-------------

In a rare lucid moment, he realises he’s been taken by terrorists.

He’s so very glad that Pepper’s not here too.

\------------

The week he goes through open heart surgery in a cave while fully conscious and devoid of any kind of anaesthetic, only misses out on the top spot in the ‘worst week ever’ competition because that position will forever be held by the week he lost his dad to the car crash.

The, third ‘worst week ever’ is tied in place with the fourth week. He’s pretty sure he’s going to have a major issue with any body of water bigger than a pint glass after those two weeks. 

He’s very definitely never mixing water and electricity again at the very least. Especially if the electricity source is embedded in his chest in the form of loose wires connected to a car battery. 

Yeah, he’s horrified too.

In the end he gives into the terrorist’s demands simply to make them stop.

He can’t bring himself to be disappointed for giving up so quickly.

\-------------

The guy in the cave with him is called Yinsen.

He tells Tony he only has a week left to live.

Well that kinda sucks.

\-------------

He wonders how long they’ve been in this cave. Shut away from the world there’s no true sense of night and day. Well, there are cycles of cold and freezing cold. He figures it’s a close enough approximation. 

He counts them up and he _thinks_ his birthday must have passed.

What do ya’ know? He’s thirty-nine.

Probably.

\-------------

The terrorists introduce themselves as the Ten Rings.

They drag him outside and it turns out they have a massive stockpile of his weapons.

Fuck.

\-------------

Yinsen keeps him going. He’s so pathetically grateful to the quiet, unassuming man, that when he asks about Tony’s extreme physical fitness, Tony lets him in on The Secret.

Yinsen reckons that if hadn’t been so close to the peak of natural human fitness, he would never have survived the surgery. 

He likes Yinsen, so he chooses to ignore the subtle comparison to Captain America and starts to explain his plans for sorting out his little shrapnel and car battery problem. 

\-------------

Even built out of scraps with shoddy tools, the miniature Arc Reactor is awesome. 

Yinsen’s question about power output gives him a second brilliant idea. 

\-------------

With his chest now free of wires, he briefly considers ‘Ninja-ing’ his way out of the cave. He still feels like shit though, and he doubts he could get more than just himself out. No way is he leaving Yinsen behind.

Besides, the bastards have hundreds of his guns. And gymnastics doesn’t make you immune to bullets. 

He’ll stick with brilliant idea number two then.

\-------------

He misses Rhodey and Happy and Obie.

He really misses Jarvis and Pepper.

Yinsen misses his family too; they’re still out in some place called Gulmira.

Yinsen’s remark about Tony’s family cuts a little too close to the bone.

Perhaps he really is a man with everything and nothing

\-------------

He figures it’s time to tell Yinsen about brilliant idea two.

He flattens out the tracing-paper plans and they start work on the suit immediately. 

Yinsen admits he’s mildly impressed.

Tony will take that for the compliment it is.

\-------------

It’s been weeks. Months probably. Most of the suit is done. It’s in pieces scattered around the cave. Tony hopes that the various lumps look enough like crude missile cases that they’ll avoid any suspicion. 

The last thing they need now is to be caught; they’re too close to succeeding.

“Relax Stark, everything is going to plan. It’ll all work out.”

Tony really hopes Yinsen is right. 

\-------------

They’re playing backgammon. 

Yinsen is good. Yinsen is very good.

He’s practically a backgammon master.

But Tony’s a genius. 

So….

Tough luck Yinsen.

\-------------

Tony meets Raza.

It’s hate at first sight.

He comes far too close to losing Yinsen. He fast talks his way out of the situation, but it really was far too close a call. 

He lost Jarvis. He’s not losing Yinsen too.

\-------------

A threat and an ultimatum. 

They have till tomorrow to assemble ‘the missile’.

Well, he always did think sleep was for the weak anyway. 

\-------------

He works all day.

And straight through the night. 

And all of the next morning. 

Yinsen tries to stay up too, but at some point Tony makes him get some sleep; at least one of them should be reasonably well rested. 

The only time he pauses in his frantic assembly is to partially weld the cave door shut and to wire up a mini bomb to it. He quite enjoyed making that. Then again, he always did enjoy making things that go boom. 

\-------------

“Yinsen! Yinsen! Stick to the plan! Stick to the plan!”

Yinsen doesn’t stick to the plan. 

\-------------

Tony has always been glad of his above average upper body strength. Being an engineer, it comes in as extremely useful. He does after all, spend quite a lot of his time hefting round large chunks of metal and reels of wire and cable. Not to mention all the forge hammering he does; can’t rely on automated production for everything can he?

Even with all the crude electronic and mechanical assistance he’s installed into the suit, it still weighs an absolute tonne. So right now he’s _very_ glad of his above average body strength.

Jesus Christ, the suit is heavy. 

Despite this, he somehow makes it all the way down the corridor and through the second door. And through all the men who get in the way. He makes it all the way to the entrance of the cave!

Where he finds Yinsen in a crumbled, blood soaked heap against the wall.

Yinsen really should have stuck to the plan.

And he shouldn’t have lied about his family. 

“Don’t waste your life Stark.”

No, he really won’t.

\-------------

It’s cathartic at first, using the welding torches he ‘repurposed’ as flamethrowers. He thinks of it as blazing away his mistakes to leave a clear path to his future. It’s revenge for killing Yinsen. 

Then smell of burning flesh reaches his nose.

After that he’s just sickened.

He’s never building flamethrowers again.

\-------------

Well the rocket propulsion system works considerably better than he was anticipating. 

He really should have thought about the landing though; the ground is getting awfully close awfully fast.

Shit!

\-------------

He’s been trekking through this godforsaken desert for two days now and he seriously needs a drink. 

He aches all over from his crash landing, his legs are numb from constant walking, his arms scream from the sunburn and the Arc Reactor feels like someone shoved a massive lump of metal into his chest. Which is kinda exactly what it is, but it feels particularly heavy today.

It will be highly ironic, he thinks, if he escapes death by waterboarding and terrorists only to die alone of dehydration. 

\-------------

He’s never been more glad to see a military helicopter in his life.

He’s never been more glad to see Rhodey either.

And yeah, he’ll definitely ride with Rhodey if there’s ever a next time.

\-------------

They decide take him to an airbase in Germany. He must sleep through the journey because he wakes to find himself tucked into a hospital bed, cleaned up and wearing fresh clothing. Being clean has never felt better.

He also must have mumbled something to Rhodey about the Arc Reactor at some point, because the Airman is hovering protectively at his bedside, waving off Doctors and telling them to “keep your grubby mitts off of my best friend!” 

Rhodey probably has a hundred questions he wants answered about what happened, but he must see something in Tony’s eyes and he never does ask. He just smiles reassuringly and goes back to playing guard dog.

\-------------

The Air Force wants to debrief him.

He tells them, in rather more words, to sod off.

He tells the DOD, the FBI, and the CIA to sod off too.

They’re all asshats anyway.

\-------------

21st August, 2009. Thirty-nine years old.

The plane lands back on American soil. It’s good to be home.

The cargo door opens and Pepper is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Actually, he’s pretty sure she’s gotten even more beautiful while he was away. She’s a shining beacon of light in his darkness, a last bastion of hope in a deserted land, an angel hidden amongst common men.

Oh lord above, he’s waxing poetic about love. Captivity must have turned him into a total sap! He’s really glad nobody can hear his thoughts, because he’s internally turning into a big pile of emotional mushy goop. He cracks a joke about tears for her long lost boss and prays that she doesn’t notice his floundering.

He thinks his face might break he’s smiling so hard.

He refuses to go to the hospital and instead tells them all that he wants a cheeseburger and a press conference. They grumble, but eventually acquiesce. 

He also shows Pepper the Arc Reactor in the car and she fusses over him the entire away there.

Oh god, he is so completely smitten. 

\------------

In a few days he’ll decide to call this event ‘The Press Conference’.

Right now, it’s simply ‘doing the right thing’. 

He shuts down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark Industries. He never did enjoy making them and now he’s seen first-hand the damage they do. He’s knows that it will make a lot of people angry but he also knows it’s the right thing to do too.

He talks about his dad when explaining his decision, muses on what his thoughts and feelings might have been.

The reporters think he means Howard. 

No, he’s doing this for Jarvis. 

And he’s doing it for Yinsen.

He’s doing it for every young American that’s ever been killed by the very weapons he built to defend and protect them. 

He refuses to be comfortable with a zero accountability system any longer.

\------------

Predictably the press go nuts. Tony does a runner; he has absolutely no desire to deal with them at the minute. So instead he gets Happy to take him out to the main Stark Industries R&D building, the one with the original Arc Reactor prototype in the back foyer. 

It’s less than twenty minutes before Obie shows up. 

He’s obviously upset, but he’s being a lot more patient than Tony expected him to be. 

Then again, apparently Rhodey can’t keep a secret. Which is a total shame because Tony wanted to be the one to tell Obie about the miniaturised reactor. 

Still, after he’d agreed to lay low ‘till things blew over a bit, Obie seemed satisfied enough. He obviously still had some reservations, but Tony was confident everything would work out fine.

\------------

When he finally gets home that night, he’s exhausted and aching all over. He goes down to his workshop and his bots, ushers them both through into his gymnasium, curls up around the base of DUM-E’s arm and falls asleep listening to J.A.R.V.I.S quietly list off Kata names.

He can’t believe he’s finally home.

\------------

Pepper finds him still cuddling the bot in the morning. He’s pretty sure she took pictures. 

He’s also pretty sure he must smell awful because Pepper practically drags him upstairs and shoves him into his bathroom.

He’s still seriously achy so he decides to have a bath. Loosen up some stiff muscles with a nice long hot soak. 

Dumbest idea ever. 

Pepper saves him from the flashback. More or less anyway. Doesn’t matter, he can tell she tried her absolute hardest even though she was practically panicking too. She bundles him up in towels and runs her hand repeatedly through his damp hair, muttering reassurances all the while.

“It’s all right, Tony, you’re gonna be alright Tony.”

While she’s still there he almost believes the lie.

\------------

Later that day, J.A.R.V.I.S helps him contact some building contractors. 

They come in the next morning to remodel his bathroom.

He leaves the pool only because Pepper uses it. 

\------------

He’s changed his mind. The miniaturised Arc Reactor is not awesome. The miniature Arc Reactor is a huge pain in the ass.

It’s still an absolutely amazing piece of tech, that will never change, but after far too short a workout in his gymnasium, he’s found a few problems. He’s aware that some of them can be fixed or lessened, simply by creating an updated version that wasn’t built in a cave out of scraps, but there’s far too many that he can do nothing about. 

The first and most immediate problem is with his lungs and his breathing. Now, he’s eternally grateful to Yinsen for saving his life, he really his, but he kinda wishes the good doctor could’ve done that without cutting a huge whole in his chest. Missing chunks of sternum and ribs combined with displaced internal organs and muscles result in reduced lung capacity. 24.8% reduced lung capacity. Lung capacity that is highly prized by gymnast and martial arts prodigies. 

He figures that he can learn to live with it, but he’ll have to incorporate considerably more breathing exercises into his daily routine from now on.

Secondly, he’s a little worried about his heart. It is this problem that caused his earlier workout to be cut short. He hadn’t really thought about the implications much, it not being a topic he had any desire to dwell on, but he’d had _open heart surgery_ in a _cave_. He should have figured that even without the added complication of the remaining shrapnel, he’d develop a heart condition. In this case he suspects he’s got very mild arrhythmia. J.A.R.V.I.S only detected a single second-long set of fluttering beats, but it was enough to leave him with a slightly tight chest and little bit of dizziness.

His solution to this is to adapt the electromagnet to also work as a pacemaker at the same time he fits the Mark II chest piece. In the mean-time, he’ll have J.A.R.V.I.S actively monitor his heart rate at all times when he’s in the mansion, and he’ll fix up a wrist-worn cardio monitor than he can wear if he ever has to go out. 

He’ll ease off on the aerobic exercises too for now, just in case. He’d rather not give himself a cardiac arrest –or worse, induce sudden death- just because he fancied going that extra half mile on the treadmill. 

In his opinion, the worst issue comes simply from the size and position of the Arc Reactor. There’s really no way round the fact that, casing included, it’s a good five inches in diameter and four inches deep into his chest. And that means he’s no longer quite as upper body flexible as he’d like to be. He can just about manage a gymnastic tuck jump (though it feels mighty strange), but any martial arts moves involving putting pressure on his chest are right out. 

As he said, no way round that issue, so he’ll just have to learn to work around it. 

With all that decided, there’s only one thing left to do; to get to work.

First things first, he’s needs to look at the Arc Reactor designs. 

\------------

He’s hit a bit of a roadblock with the Reactor.

He’s done all the necessary design upgrades, built it to the highest quality out of the best available materials and he’s successfully installed the pacemaker, 

Problem is, he can’t get at the base of the socket.

Fortunately for him, Pepper has small hands. 

She’s not so happy about it.

The funniest part of the whole Reactor swapping debacle is the way she stops right in the middle of the installation to calmly tell him that she’s ‘gonna make this ok’. 

He’s a little concerned that she chose to do this right in the middle of him going into cardiac arrest, when what he really needed was for her to hurry up and get the damn thing plugged in. But he doesn’t die so no harm, no foul. 

And the sad but adoring way she looks at him when he tells her that he doesn’t have anyone else but her completely melts his heart. 

(She smiles even more sweetly when they go through the good ‘ole ‘will that be all Mr. Stark’ routine. He really has to do something about this horrendous crush or it’s going to be the death of him.)

\------------

With that all out of the way, serious training and sparring can recommence.

And brilliant idea number two is about to get a whole lot bigger too.

\------------

Armed with his shiny new cardio-wristwatch, he goes to see Rhodey, hoping to gain his support with the project he’s got planned. At first it’s all fine and he’s happy to see Tony up and about. Then of course The Press Conference comes up. It sort of goes downhill from there. 

Then again he’s surprised that Rhodey is talking to him at all; with Stark Industries out of the weapons game, the Air Force and the rest of the military are going to be stuck using second rate equipment soon. Probably Hammer Tech, the poor sods, so he can understand why his best friend is a little pissed off, but he’s still not reversing his decision. 

He’s a little miffed that Rhodey isn’t interesting in helping regardless, but the conclusion to the conversion obviously means that the Lieutenant Colonel needs a bit more time to cool off, so he decides he’ll just have to start on his own. 

Back to the mansion alone then. 

\------------

Down in the ‘shop he pulls up a hologram of the Mark I suit blueprints. Oh boy is this gonna take some work.

\------------

After some deliberation he decides that flying is completely necessary and that rockets and jetpacks are far too old hat for something that’s StarkTech. And as he’s on a boundary-pushing invention-streak, why not start from scratch and make something better? 

Repulsors sound cool.

Repulsors sound like a plan.

\------------

He’s a genius and he can work fast when he has little to distract him, but the boots take weeks. Dum-E, bless his little mechanical heart, is determined to help. He mostly just gets in the way but Tony can’t help but love the daft bugger for it anyway. 

\------------

It’s less than a week ‘till the end of September and Tony is pretty sure the boots are ready for their first live test. He gathers up DUM-E and YOU, rolls out his testing grid and connects all the necessary wires up to his Arc. He’s not completely a reckless idiot, so he arms DUM-E with a fire extinguisher and only sets the thrust capacity to 10%. He even lets J.A.R.V.I.S control the electronics and do the necessary math for the power output levels so that he can concentrate on manoeuvring.

10% turns out to be a bit of an over estimation. 

If he hadn’t automatically twisted into a semi-controlled flip while in the air, then he’s almost certain he would have just broken his neck and spine. 

Guess that means that The Secret is now officially lifesaving. 

Eight year old him had the best ideas. 

\------------

He needs a solution to his flight problem. He needs some form of stabilisation, some way of balancing himself. Like he does when he’s on a gymnastics beam and he holds his hands out to maintain the correct centre of gravity.

Holds his hands out…

He’s got it! Hand repulsor flight stabilisers!

\------------

Pepper comes down to the lab to tell him Obie’s upstairs just as he’s fine-tuning his first suit glove prototype. He’s just as surprised as she is when it activates with enough force to throw him across the room. Probably not the best way to demonstrate how completely harmless it is. Oops. 

He figures the best way to avoid explaining to her what just happened is to do what she wanted in the first place and go talk to Obie. 

And hey, look! Obie brought pizza! 

He’s right about the pizza meaning that things didn’t go too well in New York. Then again, it’s probably his own fault for bunking off the meeting. 

The Board of Directors want to lock him out, stating PTSD as validation for filing an injunction. Figures. Backstabbing bastards.

He doesn’t even have PTSD. Much. Well there was that one water-induced flashback-slash-panic-attack incident weeks ago and a few nightmares that were all during the first few nights of being home, but other than that he’s been fine. Ok, so there were actually three water-induced flashbacks but he knows not to put his face under the shower stream now, so hopefully that’ll be the end of that.

In other words, contrary to all expectations -including his own somehow- he’s actually doing okay. He’d even go as far as saying that a psychiatrist would give him a clean bill of mental health. Well, they’d say he was no more cracked up than he was before Afghanistan anyway. Same thing. 

So really, the Board should stop throwing unfounded accusations around. As there’s no way he’s letting Obie play with any Arc Reactor technology until he’s done a whole lot more designing and testing, and the suit is not something that he’s ever going to share, there’s not a lot he can do for the company right now besides continue to stay out of the way. Pepper and Obie obviously have it all under control anyway, so he’s not worried.

As far as he’s concerned, there’s not a whole lot else to say, but Obie clearly wants to nag him some more, so he escapes back to his workshop. And he takes some more pizza. Because seriously, New York Pepperoni is the best. 

\------------

Early October.

With both gloves now completed, live flight test number one goes considerably better than the first.

He’s learnt his lesson. He starts at just 1% thrust capacity. 2.5% gets him the results he wanted in the first place.

Yeah, he can fly.

Shame about the burn marks on the car.

\------------

He finishes the suit blueprints and J.A.R.V.I.S starts the manufacturing process. Being a new process, It’s gonna take a couple of days before it’s ready. 

He spends the time in the gym determining which types of martial arts are going to work best once he’s suited up. Judo is more or less completely out as he doubts he’ll have the flexibility to throw people over his shoulders. Karate is the most obvious choice as it’s nearly all punches, kicks and blocks. If you take the throws out, then Jujitsu too, seems promising, being mostly based around weaponless pins and locks. Tai Chi and most of the other Kung Fu varieties that he knows are also in. 

Overall, he has a productive three days.

\------------

20th October, 2009.

Tony takes the completed Mark II armour out for a spin around Malibu.

There are no words to describe how amazing his first flight is. 

He should have predicted the icing problem really. No worries, he can fix that before next time.

(Secretly, he admits to himself that the freefall was one hell of an adrenaline rush)

(Plus, he admits that he still needs to work on his landings)

(And he really needs to find a way to explain the huge whole and crushed piano to Pepper)

\------------

He find a parcel with a post-it note stuck to the top. 

It reads ‘From Pepper’. 

Inside is a glass case with the Mark I chest piece mounted inside. Around its outer edge are engraved the words ‘Proof That Tony Stark Has a Heart’.

It’s the best present he’s ever received. 

And maybe, just maybe, it means Pepper likes him too.

\------------

The news plays in the background. He knows how to fix the icing problem.

Titanium-Gold Alloy. Just like that tactical satellite he helped design. See, he told you he could fix it. 

And just because he’s still a teenager at heart, he even throws a little hot-rod red in there.

The Mark III is gonna look amazing.

He smiles at J.A.R.V.I.S’s sarcasm and lets the A.I start the rendering process. Turning towards the TV, he decides that he needs to go change into a tux; he’s a little miffed that they didn’t invite him to one of his own annual benefits. He figures he’ll just gate crash. 

\------------

He meets Obie outside the concert hall. His long time business partner seems confident that the problem with his mutinous Board will be sorted soon, so he meanders inside, glad that there’s at least one problem he can stop worrying so much about.

Not really sure what else to do, he heads straight for the bar and gets his usual apple juice/fake scotch. He worked out years ago that people stop trying to give you drinks if you already have one in hand, and that you can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes about how much you’ve drunk if you change what drink you’re holding regularly. 

Now with a glass in hand, he’s planning on circulating around the room a bit, seeing if he can dispel some of these PTSD rumours. Of course he doesn’t even manage to turn fully around from the bar before he meets Agent for the first time. 

He doesn’t think much of the quiet, unassuming man that first time they meet, mentally writing him off as nothing more than just another random government agent. All the same, he tries to be more or less polite and hear him out, having decided it’s time to show the public his actual personality rather than just his fake asshole façade. 

Despite his good intentions, he doesn’t actually manage to pay much attention to what the man is saying. Something about a Strategic Division and a debriefing and an appointment and who the hell cares when Pepper is _dressed like that!_

He can’t take his eyes of her. Oh god that dress. He’s never felt so much like a nervous, drooling teenager in all his life. He wanders over to compliment her on it and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s asking her to dance.

It’s awkward as fuck.

Highlights include her babbling about deodorant, the dress being the birthday present that was supposed to be from him, and him not remembering more than one digit of his social security number. 

Like he said, kinda awkward. 

Pepper rescues them both from further embarrassment by dragging him out onto the balcony. 

Where things proceed to move to a whole new level of awkward. 

She’s completely flustered and he does his best to reassure her that it was completely harmless and-

“…We just danced,” he shrugs.

“No, it was not just a dance. You don't understand because you're you. And everybody knows exactly who you are and how you are with girls-”

“Yeah, about that Pep-”

“Yes Tony, I know you’re secretly gay and all that, which is completely fine. But, you know, then me, you're my boss…”

He phases the rest of what she’s saying out, his brain temporarily going offline over the total shock of her thinking he’s gay. Well he more or less is, bar a couple of bits of dabbling here and there, but how on Earth does she know that? He’s never said anything and he’s always been so careful; it wouldn’t have done the company any good if his preferences ever got out, what with the military and their other big investors all being so Right-Wing and Conservative.

Which means she must have worked out that he pretty much never sleeps with any of the women he brings home, and jumped to her conclusion from there. But when did she work that out? Why did she never say anything?!

And oh, good god, no wonder she’s completely oblivious to his infatuation. She thinks he’s gay, so _of course_ he would never think of her romantically.

He gets so caught up in examining this revelation that he doesn’t realise that he’s been continuing the conversation on autopilot and that she’s leaning in to kiss him. And he’s just stood there staring. Like a lemon. 

The awkward level just went through the roof.

“I would like a drink please. I would like a Vodka Martini please.”

“Okay.” 

“Very dry with olives, a lot of olives. Like, at least three olives.”

He’s screaming internally. Jesus fucking Christ, that was his chance right there and he’s a _total fucking moron._ He’ll probably never get another chance like that because Pepper _thinks he’s gay!_

Oh man, he’s never gonna forgive himself. 

\------------

His heart is still pounding in his chest and he’s surprised his cardio monitor isn’t screaming blue murder at him.

He’s at the bar getting Pepper her Martini. 

He orders one for himself because he needs something to hold and he has no idea where his apple juice has gone. 

Then that woman accosts him. That one from just before Afghanistan. That one whom he refers to as ‘Dumb Lapse in Judgement’. (He knows that’s probably insulting, but it’s more aimed at himself than her.)

Carrie?

Christine.

At first he wants nothing more than to run away from her and get back to Pepper; he has some patching up desperately in need of doing there.

Then she shows him the photos of his weapons

Hundreds of them. In Gulmira. Where Yinsen was from. 

He sees red. 

Obie is still out on the red carpet when he gets outside. He storms up to him, needing to know whether or not he knew about the photos and their content, and if he did, why he didn’t say anything. 

Tony shows Obie the photos.

Obie calls him naïve. Obie was the one who filed the Board’s injunction. Obie’s the one trying to lock him out.

Obie knew about the double dealing.

The bottom of Tony’s stomach drops out. 

\------------

“The 15-mile hike to the outskirts of Gulmira can only be described as a descent into hell, into a modern day Heart of Darkness.”

The news plays in the background as Tony sits and adjusts a Mark III suit glove.

“Simple farmers and herders from peaceful villages have been driven from their homes, displaced from their lands by warlords emboldened by a new-found power. Villagers have been forced to take shelter in whatever crude dwellings they can find in the ruins of other villages, or here in the remnants of an old Soviet smelting plant.”

He turns his screwdriver and watches the repulsor start to hum and glow. Inside, he feels cold.

“Recent violence has been attributed to a group of foreign fighters referred to by locals as the Ten Rings. As you can see, these men are heavily armed and on a mission. A mission that could prove fatal to anyone who stands in their way.”

The Ten Rings. Of course it would be them. He turns to the glass entrance windows. It takes every ounce of his training and willpower not blast the glass into smithereens.

“With no political will or international pressure, there's very little hope for these refugees. Around me, a woman begging for news on her husband, who was kidnapped by insurgents, either forced to join their militia-”

He hears the word kidnapped and his self-control snaps.

“Desperate refugees clutch yellowed photographs, holding them up to anyone who will stop. A child's simple question, "Where are my mother and father?" ” 

One glass pane destroyed. Two. Three.

“There's very little hope for these refugees, refugees who can only wonder who, if anyone, will help.”

He comes to the last panel. His reflection stares out him. He should never have built those weapons. He should never have trusted Obie. He should never have believed that his company would be fine without his immediate input. 

He blasts away his reflection. Gulmira is his fault. He should have acted sooner

In his mind, Obie changes back to Obadiah. 

\------------

22nd October, 2009

Tony flies the Mark III to Afghanistan. 

He isn’t stupid. He learnt in the cave that sometimes bullets have to be chosen over stealth and martial arts. So he’s kitted the suit out with more firepower than a small tank.

The terrorists are dead before they know what’s hit them.

He leaves the leader to the locals. He knows a thing or two about wanting revenge after all.

\------------

Slight hiccup.

He gets hit by an anti-aircraft tank missile.

He hits the tank right back. With an anti-tank missile.

The resulting explosion is highly satisfying.

\------------

Slightly bigger hiccup.

He probably should have expected the F22 Raptors. J.A.R.V.I.S had informed him that Gulmira was in a legal no fly zone before he left after all. And here he was, in said-no-fly-zone, using a previously unseen piece of seriously high tech equipment to blow shit up. The Military were probably cacking themselves right now, trying to work out what the hell was going on.

Oh, and look, now his phone is ringing. Seriously what on Earth is going to tell Rhodey?

The excuses he comes up with are beyond lame, he knows that, and he’s honestly not sure why he bothers denying his involvement after that. He’s even less sure why Rhodey lets him get away with continuing to issue denials. 

Then suddenly he’s being shot at. Time to do another runner. 

He goes supersonic. The two jets keep up. He’s seconds away from being blasted by missiles. He deploys flares. He dodges another hail of bullets. He deploys the suits flaps. 

He then spends some time clinging to the bottom of the left hand jet, desperately shouting down the phone at Rhodey to call the attack off, that it’s him in the suit. Unfortunately the other pilot spots him while the Colonel is still trying to process that information and next thing he knows he’s being spun round and round and one of the Raptors somehow hits him. 

And yes Rhodey, the plane _did_ hit him, not the other way round. 

Thankfully Rhodey manages to gather his scattered wits after that and calls off the attack. Which gives Tony the opportunity to go save the poor bugger whose parachute hadn’t launched. 

With the pilot saved and everything now wrapped up, he tells Rhodey to spout the usual training exercise BS and heads for home. 

All in a day’s work.

\------------

Slight problem getting the armour off. He’ll reprogram the disassembly platform to take into account battle damage in the future.

In the meantime Pepper, walks in on him. 

It’s a lot like the time she walked in on him and discovered the Secret. Only she’s not nearly as impressed this time. Like she says, it’s probably because of all the bullet holes. 

\------------

Pepper is understandably pissed with him. Which is not good because he really needs to correct her presumption about his sexuality. And- and talk to her about the suit. That too. 

(Oh god, he needs to get his priorities sorted.)

Anyway, Pepper’s seriously mad at him, so he retreats to the safety of his gym with a tablet, deciding to start trying to find out how deep Obadiah is in with this under the table business. It should give Pepper the time she needs to calm down and it’ll give him the time he needs to think through how he’s going to approach her.

He’s not hiding from her, not really. Honest!

\------------

He’s got a bad feeling about Obadiah. 

Stark Industries’ network security is good. Really good. In fact, it’s second best in the world only to Tony’s only security network. But Tony designed and built them both himself, so he should have no trouble accessing the shipping manifests through one of the backdoors he always leaves.

Only he can’t access them. Which means Obadiah is hiding something. Something big. 

He’s got a really bad feeling about Obadiah.

\------------

The next morning, he designs a work-around for the network system; a simple lock chip that discovers and decodes encrypted files. Only there’s a slight issue in that it’ll have to be used on site to work. With the way he’s been lying low the last couple of months, it’ll be suspicious he if shows up at Stark Industries’ Head Office out of the blue, especially as he’ll have to actively avoid Obadiah. 

The obvious solution is to send Pepper in his stead, as she’s in and out of the building all the time; unlike Tony, no one will look twice at her. 

Of course that means he’ll have to man up and actually talk to her. 

He really hopes she’s not still mad.

\------------

She’s definitely still mad. Really mad.

She even goes as far as quitting. 

Then again that’s probably his own fault for thinking about Gulmira while explaining what to do with the lock chip and getting all riled up. In retrospect, he should have saved the ‘there is nothing but the next mission’ speech for a more appropriate time. Like never, that would have been a good time. 

He manages to save his own ass with the ‘I just finally know what I have to do and I know in my heart that it's right’ line. 

He gets all warm and fuzzy inside when her reply is 

“You’re all I have too, you know.”

\------------

What happens next almost rivals being kidnapped by terrorists in terms of horrificness. 

\------------

After Pepper leaves he goes to burn some time doing some training. He’d been surprised by how flexible and agile the Mark III was, so he figures he can use some of the previously vetoed MMA moves and also start to think about how to incorporate some of his gymnastic flips into his flying. 

After a few hours he realises he’s kinda hungry so he shrugs out of his Kung Fu jacket and skips upstairs to go raid the kitchen. 

Just as he gets to the top of the stairs, he hears the landline phone ringing and detours into the living room to answer it. 

He picks it up, sits down and seeing that it’s Pepper calling, answers it.

He never gets to say hello back.

A weird buzzing fills his ears and instantly all of his muscles lock up. Even as he sags helplessly against the back of the couch, the phone is pulled from his lax grip and a hand supports the back of his head like a cruel parody of comforting care. 

He can see Obidiah from the corner of his eye. 

His long-time business partner, the man he trusted since he was fifteen years old, the man who was for all purposes his godfather, tried to have him killed.

And he’s trying again now. 

He speaks about golden eggs, about owning ideas, about Howard and the atomic bomb. He says it all in a calm collected voice that does nothing to dampen the whirring and the sickening pop as the Arc Reactor is pulled viciously from his chest. 

His heart clenches painfully; in just a few short months, it has grown use to the support of the pacemaker he installed. Without the Arc there to power and regulate it, it’s suddenly doing more harm than good. 

His mind is a wash of pain and he blurs out most of what Obaidah says next. He tries to focus, but all he can pick out is ‘my prototype’ and ‘legacy’. 

Then come the words “Too bad you had to involve Pepper in this. I would have preferred that she lived.” He hears every single one of those words. 

He screams at his muscles to move, begs his body to respond. He’s spent hundreds of thousands of hours training his body and mind, honing his skills and precision. Hundreds of thousands of hours learning how to use his own body as both a shield and weapon. And right now he can’t even lift his little finger in his own defence, let alone Pepper’s.

He’s forced to watch Obadiah –No. _Stane_. 

He’s forced to watch Stane walk away. His resolve hardens. 

He’s going to survive this. And then he’s going to take that bastard down. 

\------------

He staggers into the stairwell. The paralysis has worn off just enough for him to move but now the impending cardiac arrest is causing more than a few problems. 

Blurred vision, spinning head, shaking limbs, lack of coordination and falling down the stairs kind of problems. He smacks into the wall hard at the bottom. He’s got to get to the Mark I Arc. 

He hauls himself up and the world starts to tilt sideways again. He’s on his knees and he’s crawling. Dragging himself across the floor. He has to reach it, he has to. He has to so he can save Pepper. 

It’s right there, just millimetres from the end of his fingers. 

He can’t reach it. 

His legs give out. 

He’s going to die.

Alone, on his workshop floor. Only inches from his salvation. 

DUM-E hands him down Pepper’s present.

“Good boy”

\------------

Rhodey finds him passed out amongst the smash glass.

When he’s shaken awake, he immediately asks about Pepper. 

She’s with five agents but Tony knows that’s not going to be enough, not if Stane really has built his own suit.

It’s not going to be anywhere near enough. 

\------------

He powers J.A.R.V.I.S back up and suits up.

Rhodey will keep the skies clear.

\------------

He’s starting to remember all the reasons why he built the Mark II chest piece. The Mark I was never designed to be used with the suit and the power levels were already decreasing rapidly. It would have to do though, until he could get the newer version back from Stane. 

Knowing that there was not a lot he could about it right now though, he pushed aside his worry and rang Pepper. He needed to know for himself that she was alright.

She answers and he knows immediately that she’s still in danger.

Because his suspicions were right, Stane had built his own suit. 

And he also knows that if he so much as lays a single finger on Pepper, then Stane is already a dead man walking. 

\------------

He gets to Stark Industries just in time.

He slams into Stane and his monstrous suit, protecting Pepper. 

They confront each other on the Malibu highway.

Tony’s highlight of the fight his when he gets run over by an Audi. 

But it doesn’t matter. The second he sees that Stane has also gotten his monstrosity of a suit to fly, he knows exactly how to end it. 

He climbs for the clouds.

The clouds. And the ice. 

\------------

Stane’s suit freezes over and his old business partner starts the long fall down to his death. 

Just in time too; the Mark I Arc Reactor is about to cut out all together so J.A.R.V.I.S switches over to using the emergency backup power. Which means Tony’s now falling too.

Hopefully not to his death though.

That wouldn’t be good. 

\------------

Using short bursts of repulsor power he manages to land safely back on top of the Stark Industries building. 

Of course Stane waits until he’s started to strip out of the suit before miraculously being not-dead.

There’s a lot of rolling around and hiding behind air ducts after that. 

Not knowing what else to do, he calls Pepper and gets her to start overloading the large Reactor prototype. Now all he has to do is get clear of the roof. That’s gonna prove to be difficult unless he can get Stane to stop shooting at him. 

Eventually he manages to tuck-flip onto Stane’s back and rips out his targeting system. It doesn’t go entirely to plan though as the next thing he knows he’s clinging desperately to a steel girder while Stane gets closer and closer to blowing his head off with a missile. 

He does the math. There’s a 65% chance he’ll die if Pepper hits the master bypass now. But that goes up to 87% if Stane is allowed to get another three shots off. 

He knows which odds he’d rather take. 

He tells Pepper to push the button. 

\------------

On the 24th of October 2009, Tony Stark kills his Godfather.

Well technically Pepper does, but that’s just semantics really. 

\------------

He wakes in a hospital. 

Huh, he must have passes out after the reactor blast. 

The first thing he notices is that Pepper and Rhodey are looming over him looking worried. Secondly, his chest piece is no longer flickering so they must have gotten the Mark II back from Stane.

He gives them his best winning smile. Neither of them are fooled. 

Then Agent man shows up and suddenly it doesn’t matter because he’s been dragged to a press conference. 

\------------

The cover story is preposterous. No one is ever going to believe it. A bodyguard? Really? 

Screw this.

25th October 2009. Tony is 39 when he throws the cards out of the window.

“Truth is. I am Ironman.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8000 words. that's the longest chapter I've ever written. I actually debated splitting it in two but decided you guys deserved it all in one go as a thank you for all the comments and kudos :)
> 
> After a small amount of consideration, I decided to stick to the minimalist style I accidentally developed last chapter. It's not quite the same given the considerably shorter time frame, but I think it works?  
> As I said, the time frame was much shorter here, so I went with mostly using dates rather than ages. I got most of them from this [Timeline](http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/5395/A-Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-Timeline). Some of them are from other marvel canon and one or two, straight from my brain, but most are from there.  
> I also used this [transcript](http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/a2/iron-man-script-transcript.html) a lot if anyone else is thinking of doing something similar.  
> That being said, I know that some bits are not quite in the same order as the film, but after re-writing some bits several times, I figured it works as it is :)
> 
> Coming soon(ish)! Ironman 2!  
> I have to go print out my evil Uni report now, so 'till next time folks!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote all 7000 words of this in 10 hours flat. So it's probably full of cringe-worthy mistakes
> 
> Finally starts to become a lot more AU at the end of this!

“Truth is. I am Ironman.”

Yeah, on second thoughts, maybe announcing that to the world wasn’t such a great idea. Agent has a carefully schooled blank face that just screams murder to Tony. Pepper and Rhodey look a mixture of dumbfounded and infuriated.

He falls back on a tactic he seems to have been utilising a lot lately; he does yet another runner.

\-------------

He doesn’t get very far before Agent and Pepper catch up to him. Both of them shout a lot at him but he barely hears any of it. He’s completely in shock over himself. He’d kept The Secret for years and years, never once losing his composure and yet the second a reporter had prodded him over _this_ , he’d completely lost his cool and blurted it all out. 

No taking it back now though. All he can do is go along with it and help with the damage control.

He allows Agent and Pepper to drag him back inside. 

\-------------

It’s dark out and very late when he finally gets back to the mansion. He’s spent all day in a daze, being harangued by reporters, hauled from this building to that by Pepper, sit down, shut up, behave, answer this phone call, sign this, get in this car, say this while we record you, eat this, drink that, smile for the camera, smile, smile, smile, perfect dancing monkey.

He’s never been so exhausted in his life. His chest is a wash of black and blue and aches to match it, his arms are covered in tiny stinging glass cuts and grazes, his feet and legs feel like they’re about to drop off and his head is pounding dully in a way that reminds him of that one awful time he got drunk when he was fourteen.

All he wants to do is down a pint of fresh orange juice and collapse into his bed. 

Apparently the universe is still angry with him for his little stunt earlier though, because there’s a guy stood in the darkness of his living room. 

Just great. 

Usually any wannabe-intruders wouldn’t have even gotten through the porch before J.A.R.V.I.S. had sprung into action and dealt with them, but the A.I was still mostly depowered from when Stane had fucked around with him the night before. When he’d gone running after his Godfather, he’d been in such a hurry, he’d only loaded enough of J.A.R.V.I.S up to run the suit properly – he hadn’t bothered with most of the house.

He swears that J.A.R.V.I.S is the first thing he’s going to fix tomorrow because dealing with tall, dark and ominous is the last thing he wants to do right now. Especially as he’s obviously been fucking round with the little bit of J.A.R.V.I.S he had manage to restore. 

He really wishes the guy would save the melodrama for another day and the hell out of his house, but even Tony can’t deny that the mention of other superheroes catches his attention. 

And he’ll definitely look into Nick Fury tomorrow too. Nick Fury, and the rest of these so called ‘Avengers’. 

\-------------

He does eventually manage to get his house back to himself and he immediately abandons all his other plans in favour of collapsing into his bed fully clothed. He’s never announcing that he’s Ironman ever again. 

\-------------

Pepper shows up around ten am the next morning with another unfairly tall stack of paperwork. He’s still sprawled ungainly on top of the bed, face down with his head buried in his pillows, but that doesn’t stop her from forcing a pen into his lax hand and shoving dotted lines under his nose. 

He spends the next few minutes sighing and mumbling nonsense and generally being uncooperative. He’s still completely exhausted and the last thing he wants to do is start yesterday’s song and dance routine all over again, so he gives in to impulse, rolls over, buries his face against Pepper’s side where she’s perched on the edge of the bed and promptly falls back asleep. 

\-------------

The next time he wakes, he’s alone and his shirt and belt have been removed. 

There’s a glass of apple juice and a plate of cold toast on the bedside table. Stuck to the former is a green post-it note, Pepper’s elegant handwriting filling it. 

“You have the day off. Get some ice on those bruises, and remember to eat! I’ll be round later to check on you. You owe me a big one, Pepper x”

Despite the dull aching throb still radiating through his whole body, he goes about the rest of his day with a bound in his step and smile on his face. 

\-------------

His first job is to get J.A.R.V.I.S back up to fully functioning. Booting up one of his backup computer units, he cracks open his A.I’s base-code servers and stares in horror at the mess he finds; Stane really did a number on him. 

It’s a miracle he’d gotten the suit working at all. 

He sighs in resignation and gets to work.

\-------------

Pepper finds him still hunched over the computer monitor later that night. He’s pretty sure she was about to scold him, but she glances at the screen and suddenly she looks furious. Thankfully the anger obviously isn’t directed at him.

After all, you don’t hang around Tony Stark day in, day out and not pick up a few things. So she recognises J.A.R.V.I.S’s coding and the can tell that there’s been more than just a little damage done to it. From the look on her face, Tony’s pretty sure that if the two of them hadn’t already killed Stane, then Pepper would have marched right up to him and murdered him in cold blood then and there. 

He’s in complete awe of how protective Pepper suddenly seems to have become of both J.A.R.V.I.S and himself. Actually, it’s a little scary, seeing this side of Pepper, but it’s very reassuring too. He decides he likes it. 

“Don’t build in any override codes,” she suddenly says, “None. Not for me, not for Rhodey, not for Happy. Not even for yourself. If J.A.R.V.I.S ever decides he wants to go Skynet on us all, then he damn well can. He’s as much a person as you or I and we have to make sure _this-_ ”she waves at the screen “-never happens to him again.” 

Tony smiles and turns back to the computer screen. 

\-------------

It takes him a week to fix and upgrade J.A.R.V.I.S. When he’s done, he knows for certain that no-one will ever manage to hack J.A.R.V.I.S ever again, not unless the AI actually allows it himself. He’s also so close to becoming fully sentient that even Tony is a little bit awed. 

Pepper keeps everyone off his back while he works away diligently, coming downstairs at least twice a day to make sure he’s eating and sleeping. He doesn’t know how she manages it, but for all six and a half days that he’s holed up in his workshop – even going so far as to sleep down there- no-one disturbs him. 

It’s an entirely different story when he emerges, bleary eyed on the 2nd of November.

Rhodey, Agent and Pepper are there. And what seems like the entirety of Stark Industries PR department. All camped out in Tony’s hallway and living room. 

There are tables and papers everywhere. Phones are ringing and people shuffle and race back and forth. Couriers and delivery men zip in and out of the door in a steady stream. Names of shows and newspapers and their hosts and authors are shouted across the room. Two of the younger looking women crammed into the room dance around the others, grabbing and replacing mugs of coffee, taking them to and from another couple of boys who are standing by the sink and Tony’s coffee maker respectively. His jaw drops and he stares in awe at the complete madness of it all!

What he really wants to know is why on Earth it’s happening in his house and not back at Stark Industries.

He shuffles warily over to Pepper and asks her as much.

Two reasons apparently. One: because he’s here and not at SI. And two: there’s no reporters here; they’ve been moving from place to place all week, dodging paps and journalists and today Tony’s house drew the short straw. 

She tilts her head slightly, and then with a smile, adds a third reason. Apparently his coffee maker is far better than any of the ones they have in the head office. He concedes that that’s a fair point.

Then Rhodey wanders over and with a lot of face-pulling, demands that he go take a shower. 

He laughs and weaves his way back towards the stairwell. Upstairs, he only has to throw two people out of his room, before he’s once again surrounded by blissful peace and quiet. 

\-------------

Showered and cleaned up, he throws some fresh clothes on and descends back into the madness below. 

Pepper smiles warmly at him and hands him a load of paperwork.

Great. He just _loves_ paperwork.

\-------------

It’s a few more weeks before everything finally starts to calm down. He makes a lot of public appearances, attends press conference after press conference, and Happy has to chase off more than one over enthusiastic reporter, but eventually things settle down. More or less anyway. There’s a lot of dealing with the government who keep trying to confiscate the suit and a lot of dealing with press who’ve decided that he’s out to privatise world peace. 

He shrugs and admits that that last one is more or less true. Not how he planned it, but if the shoe fits?

He thinks that’s the right metaphor anyway; he never was brilliant at English. 

\-------------

At some point Pepper moves herself into one of the spare rooms in the mansion, citing ‘better security’ as her reasoning. Tony knows that in reality she does it so that she can keep a closer eye on him, but he doesn’t complain; the company is nice and the stacks of paperwork she brings him become gloriously smaller, if also unfortunately more frequent. 

Rhodey spends most of his time either following Tony round, nagging him about the Ironman armour or at various Air Force bases being told to go nag Tony some more about the Ironman armour. 

Happy just carries on being Happy. That’s fine by Tony. 

\-------------

Tony spends his time on a variety of things. Firstly, he and J.A.R.V.I.S work together to find out everything they can about Nicholas Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. Now that they’re aware that it exists, it doesn’t take the two of them very long to find and silently worm their way into their database and systems. While they’re at it, they sneak into the FBI, CIA, DoD, MI-5 and 6, the Russian Federal Security Service and any other national or international security force he can think of. He discovers a staggeringly large number of secrets that he’s certain will get him killed if anyone ever finds out he knows them. 

S.H.I.E.L.D is by far the weirdest and the worst. That organisation has dealt with and been a part of some extraordinarily strange things over the years since their formation. It’s really not reassuring that he soon finds out that Howard was a major founding member. And apparently, Stark Industries is their main benefactor and funder. How he’s never noticed that a large part of his money is going towards the funding of a shady secret government organisation, he’ll never know. 

All that aside though, they do seem to be doing more good than harm and their Avengers Initiative programme is interesting, so he decides to simply keep an eye on them and leave them alone for now.

The biggest occupier of his time by far, is the Ironman armour and its associated missions. He fixes up the damage done to the Mark III by Stane and he and J.A.R.V.I.S set about tracking down and tracing every under-the-table shipment they can. There’s a sickeningly large number of them. Once they’ve built up a database, Tony jets off to blast his weapons to kingdom come. 

After a while, the Mark III is looking rather worn and rather than repair it yet again, the Mark IV suddenly comes into existence. 

Then after one particularly uncomfortable encounter with a small group of protestors while he’s out in New York, the Mark V suitcase armour gets invented too. 

What spare time he has around that and being dragged around by Pepper, goes on either planning the newly revived Stark Expo or in his gymnasium, or trying to drag his fitness back up to pre-Afghanistan levels. 

With the Arc Reactor still shoved deep into his chest, he knows he’s never going to quite be as good as he was, but with all the work he’s been putting in, he’s coming damn close. If he can think of someway to both hide and protect the Reactor, he might even be able to start sneaking off to competitions again soon. 

So, he’s busy, but he’s more or less enjoying himself. He’s closer than ever with Pepper (despite still not having talked to her about his sexuality), he’s managing to maintain his friendship with Rhodey even with the Air Force and the rest of the military being on both their cases, and his fitness and training are going as well as ever. 

Well of course that’s when J.A.R.V.I.S suddenly informs him of this little problem called ‘palladium poisoning’.

\-------------

The Arc Reactor is so far beyond not awesome, it’s painful.

He’s a genius so he really should have thought of it before.

Problem is, the device that’s keeping him alive is also killing him. 

\-------------

Life goes on though. There’s weapon caches to destroy, meetings with Pepper to attend, an Expo to plan for, and a palladium replacement to find. And he designs and builds the Mark III reactor, one that the centre unit of slots in and out easily so that he can replace the blasted palladium cores as they burn out. 

Christmas and New Year pass in a blur. For the first time, he decides to sod his false reputation and spends them both quietly with Pepper, Rhodey and Happy. 

It’s the best holiday season he’s ever had. 

That’s good because it’s probably going to be his last ever one too. 

\-------------

The signs are subtle at first. 

His hands shake minutely when he tries to do any soldering.

He finds himself panting uncontrollably after only thirty minutes of Kata workouts. 

His vision blurs when he looks at screens and holograms for more than ten minutes at a time.

He doesn’t tell anyone.

\-------------

It gets worse. 

After the first time he collapses, practically having a seizure, he starts choking down chlorophyll by the litre. He becomes an expert at applying makeup and covering up his pallid looking skin and the deep bags entrenched under his eyes. There are strange black lines slowly starting to appear around the reactor, spreading out like an angular barcode. He starts sleeping more than he ever has at any point in his life and finds it increasingly difficult to stay awake once he does eventually drag himself out of bed. 

Pepper and Happy have definitely noticed something’s wrong. This, he’s sure, is mostly due to the almost OCD levels of hygiene he’s also suddenly developed. He’s constantly wiping down surfaces with the bottle of sanitiser that he takes everywhere with him, won’t eat food unless he’s seen it being prepared and can’t bring himself to take things off people in case they’re transferred germs to it or something. All it took was one little mention of his ‘compromised immune system’ by J.A.R.V.I.S and he became irrationally obsessed. He knows it’s irrational but he _can’t stop himself from doing it_. The involuntary nature of the whole thing is the worst part of it by far. 

So Pepper and Happy have most certainly noticed that something is up with him, he knows they have. But he can’t bring himself to tell them what. Can’t bring himself to put that burden of worry on them. 

They worry enough about him as it is. 

\-------------

By March, 2010, Tony is screaming inside. He can’t find a suitable palladium replacement.

He really is going to die. 

\-------------

March passes into April.

He struggles on. There’s nothing else he can do.

\-------------

22nd of April. 

First day of the New York Stark expo.

He’s standing suited up on the open cargo door of a jet. He’s about to jump off and enter onto the stage in the showiest way he could imagine. 

It doesn’t let it show, but he’s extremely nervous. Not because of the crowd or stage fright or a hundred other things he got over when he was twenty-one and the world’s youngest CEO.

No, he’s nervous because there’s absolutely no guarantee that he won’t have another seizure or start coughing up blood again while he’s on stage. He’s managed to hide his illness until now, but that’ll go out the window if he collapses in front of thousands of people and a dozen TV cameras.

It would be easier if he didn’t have to do this. But he needs this expo to work so that his legacy means something when he’s gone.

He takes a deep breath and dives off the plane.

\-------------

Suprsingly, the only hiccup is getting hit by a firework on the way down. His pride really hopes that no-one noticed that. 

The speech goes well, even it was overly self-congratulatory for his taste. But he has to agree with the PR team, it was suitably grandiose for the event. He just really, really wishes he’d managed to talk them out of using that old footage of Howard. Even more, he wishes he didn’t have to refer to the man as his father. Saying it feels like a betrayal to Jarvis’s memory. 

He soon escapes back stage, humming along to Shoot to Thrill as he skips off to his left. He always did like AC/DC. 

With his already less than stellar mood souring further as Howard’s voice filters back stage, he not all that surprised when it takes a complete nose dive when he checks his blood toxicity level. It’s already at 19%. Once it reaches 96.7% he’s a dead man. 

\-------------

Eventually the opening ceremony winds down and after a couple more brief appearances on stage, he can wend his way home. 

Happy carefully guides him through the crowds that have gathered out the back. He signs cards and shakes hands and ruffles the hair of the kids that are beaming up at him and all the while desperately tries not to panic about the pathogens that have undoubtedly collected on his own hands. He’s mostly successful, but the first thing he does when they finally push through the back door is slather is them in hand-sanitiser. 

\-------------

There’s a car outside waiting for him. New Audi Convertible. It’s silver and rather nice. 

There’s also a woman leaning on the car. She’s neither male nor Pepper, but he thinks she’s rather nice too. 

Then she tries to hand him a subpoena, which Happy thankfully takes. 

Maybe not so nice. 

Oh well, off to D.C. then.

\-------------

They stop off at his New York apartment, but only to change cars, grab suitcases and pick up Pepper. 

Then they set off for the nation’s capital. They’ve got 250 miles to cover before nine am after all. 

\-------------

Including the quick stop to satisfy Tony’s McFlurry craving, the drive takes them just over four and half hours. They arrive at the D.C apartment at 3:00am. 

Tony graciously allows Pepper and Happy the use of the two beds and crashes faces down on to the sofa. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep but next thing he knows, it’s six thirty and Pepper is shaking him awake. 

He only has thirty minutes to cram bacon into his mouth and make himself presentable and then he’s being ushered out the door and into yet another car. 

\-------------

The court hearing is a total farce. So he treats it with exactly the amount of respect it deserves. Exactly none. 

Senator Sterns knew before it even started that he was never going to get his hands on the suit so why did he have to make them all go through the whole ridiculous song and dance routine? He’s not even lying when he says that the suit isn’t a weapon! It _contains_ weapons yes, but it _itself_ is not a weapon. And as no-one is clarifying that, he feels no need to point it out himself.

Then of course Sterns goes ahead and calls up Justin Hammer as a weapons expert. Really? Is he actively trying to insult him? He’s not even being sarcastic when he asks about the possibility of an actual expert appearing. 

It’s all he can do to not jump and punch the slimy bastard in his face when he starts talking about Howard and his ‘legacy’. 

Then to really emphasis just how big an asshole Sterns is, Rhodey also gets called up. The Airman is clearly unhappy to be dragged into the whole mess, but then Tony knows that Rhodey has been unhappy about the way he’s been forced against his best friend for the last six months. Tony also knew all about the report that Sterns dissects, having written chunks of it himself so that Rhodey could escape from some of the pressure the military had been putting on him. 

That doesn’t mean it’s any less hurtful when Rhodey is forced to read out the part that says he’s a threat. 

And then Sterns really goes over the line and brings up images of other people trying to make copies of his suits. 

Tony takes matters into his own hands after that and hacks into their screens, showing everyone exactly how well the copy attempts are going. 

Hammer gets stressed out, Sterns is furious, Rhodey laughs, and he gets to keep the suit. All in all, it turns out pretty well in the end. 

He even gets to call the senate assclowns and make a quip about pleasuring himself. 

And once they’re back outside and driving away, even Pepper is failing to hide her amusement behind a façade of disapproval. 

Add in the total lack of seizures and blood and yeah, it didn’t go too badly at all.

\-------------

One long flight later and he’s finally back home. Now that he’s finally alone again, he checks his blood toxicity level again. 24%. Even chugging chlorophyll daily it’s still rising damn fast.

And he’s burnt through _another_ palladium core and J.A.R.V.I.S still can’t find a viable replacement. 

And then Pepper comes down and he still can’t bring himself to tell her. He should, he really should but she’s been so protective of him lately, he just can’t break her heart that way. And as for telling her that he’s madly in love with her? No way. ‘Hey Pep, you’re the love of my life and by the way I’m about to die’. Yeah, he’s not ever doing that to her.

Then he notices that she has a cold and the annoying germ phobia rears its ugly head and he starts whining about surgical masks while internally screaming at himself to shut up.

Oh, and they get into a heated debate about the art collection which he could have sworn he talked to her about _before_ he made the donation but apparently not, which is not just embarrassing but also worrying. Because that means that means the poisoning is starting to affect his memory. Which is really not good. 

And then he finds a framed print of the suit and it’s actually pretty awesome, but there are no spare picture hooks up so he takes down another, considerably more boring picture and Pepper is still complaining about the company and its stocks and his lack of interest in either, and about the picture he just took down (Barnett Newman? Really? It’s just a plain black box? Dummy paints more interesting pictures…) and then he’s thinking he should give the picture to Pepper because she clearly likes it more than he does, just like she likes the company more than he does.

And suddenly he’s giving Pepper the company and it’s the best idea he’s had since he was eight years old. 

\-------------

Oh well ok, he’d actually been planning on doing that since he first found out he was dying. But it’s still a fantastic idea. He even pours Pepper some champagne to celebrate. 

\-------------

Now that he’s sorted out Pepper and the company, he starts thinking about Ironman. After all the world is still going to need it’s superhero even after he’s dead and gone right?

The only people he would trust with the suits are Pepper and Rhodey. And he just gave Pepper the company.

He turns to look at the Mark II. He’s going to need to make some adjustments. 

He spins a screwdriver round in his hand and gets to work.

\-------------

24th April. A month and five days before Tony’s fortieth. Man, that makes him feel old. Hopefully he’ll live that long.

Tony and Pepper meet Natasha Romanoff for the first time. She doesn’t introduce herself as that obviously, but both of them recognise her from hacked S.H.I.E.L.D files instantly. They quickly decide to play along with whatever games the spy-organisation has cooked up for now, and so Tony and Happy hurriedly relocate their sparring match to the ‘public gym’ on the main floor and Pepper goes to answer the door and let ‘Natalie Rushman’ in.

Romanoff holds her cover perfectly and her fake background almost actually checks out. J.A.R.V.I.S finds a few discrepancies and Pepper points out a few more, but it’s actually quite good. He has a bit of fun fake-ogling her and coercing her into the ring and Pepper and Happy play along perfectly, but he doesn’t push it too far. Doesn’t want to accidently play his hand after all. 

Happy on the other hand is apparently having a whale of a time winding the agent up. So much so that he actually irritates her enough that she breaks cover and smacks him down onto the mat with a half-decent Wushu move. 

Tony’s mildly impressed, but only mildly. She’s not bad, but her flexibility and agility could do with a bit of work. Plus, she telegraphs her moves like crazy. He allows himself a small smile, now knowing that if he ever had to take her on, he’d defeat the spy fairly easily. 

Then again, the infamous Black Widow is supposed to be the best of the best and that was only one single move. He decides he’ll reserve judgement for now and give her the benefit of the doubt.

Noticing he’s been stared at, he shakes off his distracted demeanour and gets back to the flirting routine. 

He knows it went well when later that night, Pepper joins him in front of the TV and they laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing was. 

\-------------

Spy or not, Romanoff actually makes quite a good PA. Even Pepper is grudgingly impressed. So the two of them sneak down to Tony’s gym and conspire to make her life just a little harder while they’re away in Monaco. Keep her on her little spy toes. 

Step one. Make ‘Ms Rushman’ believe that Pepper doesn’t want her in Monaco with them.

Step two. Get Tony to sneak her along anyway and drag her into the ensuing awkwardness. 

And that’s just the beginning. Pepper’s quite devious really.

Tony loves it. 

\-------------

The Historic Grand Prix of Monaco is something that Tony has attended regularly for a fair few years. Originally, he started coming purely because it was a good opportunity to ‘show off’ his drunken rich-boy routine. Then in 1997, he’d snuck into the pits and spent the entire weekend fixing and maintaining the cars with the other mechanics and engineers. It ended up being one of the most fun weekends of his life. 

So much fun in fact, that he’d later gone and bought his own car and set up funding for a Stark team. 

Now he comes every year armed with a wrench, a screwdriver and a set of overalls so that he can play around with said car. This year is no different. He packs his gear into a suitcase with a smile on his face. 

\-------------

Once they arrive and have settled into the hotel though, Pepper insists that he spend some time ‘mingling’ to alleviate some of the bad feelings and press they’ve been getting over the court hearing, thus preventing him from running off to play with his screwdriver set. 

He doesn’t mind dealing with the general public so much; most of them either hero-worship him from a safe distance or nod their heads in admiration and tell their mates all about how he’s changed for the better – it’s only a small minority that denounce him and kick up a fuss and he can deal with that. 

The lardy-darrs of higher society and the stuck-up business men who think they’re better than everyone around them though, they drive Tony crazy. God, he hates having to associate with them. 

And unfortunately that’s exactly what mingling is all about. 

\-------------

Justin Hammer finds him and Pepper.

Justin Hammer won’t stop trying to talk to him. 

Justin Hammer drags goddamn Christine Everhart into the conversation.

After quite a witty remark about spreads, Pepper manages to sneak away and the conversation just spirals downhill until Justin Hammer is about two seconds away from having his snivelling nose broken by Tony’s fist. 

When ‘Natalie’ provides the opportunity, Tony does the mature thing and walks away. But only because there’s far too many witnesses around to do otherwise. 

\-------------

He manages to ditch Romanoff by veering off into the men’s bathroom; he desperately needs to wash his hands at least half a dozen times after being around Hammer. His OCD is practically screaming at him. 

Having done that and noticing that he’s blessedly alone, he pulls out his little toxicity monitor and checks his blood levels.

Fifty-three percent. That’s really not good. Really, really not good. 

\-------------

When he and Pepper had discussed his sneaking off and ditching Romanoff purely to stress the agent out, he's pretty sure the plan was for him to go hide and play with the mechanics in the pits, not replace the driver.

But he’d been standing there in the bathroom, staring at his reflection and the lines etching out from the reactor, and all he could think about was doing something as reckless as his reputation suggests he would for a change. 

So he grabs the spare set of driver overalls and he does exactly that. 

\-------------

Driving his F1 car is exhilarating. 

He’s always been a fan of cars and driving, it’s why he owns so many, but formula one is on a whole other level. 

For a first timer, he’s really not doing too badly, even managing to overtake a few people. He puts it down to a combination of his martial-arts honed instincts and the experience he’s gotten from flying in the suit. 

Pepper’s going to be seething with anger later but right now he doesn’t really care. 

He’s having far too much fun to dwell on the consequences.

\-------------

He’d never, not in a thousand years, predicted meeting a raving lunatic in the middle of the track. How he’s not killed in the resulting collisions, he’ll probably never know. 

And when he eventually manages to wiggle free of the crumpled car, not only is he completely suit-less, but with those whip thing flailing around everywhere, there’s no way he’s ever getting close enough to the madman to use any of his MMA on him. 

So he stands there, dodging back and forth in the roadway, praying that someone shows up and deals with him soon. Or his already short life expectancy is about to get a whole lot shorter.

\-------------

Pepper and Happy show up with the Mark V. 

It’s another one of those moments where he’s never been happier to see Pepper in his life. 

There’s a lot of ramming the car around and awkward yelling, but once he’s suited up, he deals with crazy, bulky and whip-happy in short order. 

Now he wants to know where the psychopath came from and where he got Arc Reactor tech from.

\-------------

As expected, Pepper is beyond furious with him. 

Tony is appropriately ashamed of his behaviour and decides to spend the rest of the trip doing everything she asks of him and bowing down to her every whim. That first night, he even agrees to spend the night sleeping on Pepper’s couch in her room so that she can keep an eye on him. 

It’s a little embarrassing, the way he’s being treated like an errant child, but right now he’ll do anything to keep Pepper happy. 

Besides, he did actually behave much like an errant child.

\-------------

After the disaster of the first day, the rest of the Grand Prix is predictably cancelled. Tony finds he’s not actually all that bothered.

He usually enjoys his annual Monaco vacation. 

But after this year, he’s not sure he’ll ever come back.

\-------------

Before they set off back to Malibu, he stops by the prison where they’re holding crazy whip-man. He needs to know where he got the Reactor plans from. And why he attacked Tony the way he did. 

He looked at and poked at the crushed remains off the knock-off last night, and it’s uncomfortably close to his own designs. It’s not quite the same, not quite as good, but it’s far too close. 

\-------------

He doesn’t learn much from his conversation with Vanko, as he now knows he’s called. Just that it was simply some jumped up personal revenge plan and that he got the designs from his father. 

Vanko also makes some pretty creepy threats about bleeding-gods and sharks smelling blood, but it’s his mention of palladium in the chest just as he’s leaving that really chills his blood. 

\-------------

When he boards his private jet later that day with Pepper, he’s still pretty shaken up. 

And Pepper is still very much pissed at him. 

After a few tense minutes of sitting with his fiery tempered boss, he retreats to the on-board kitchen, hoping that the answer to all his problems lies hidden in the back of the fridge he’s staring into. 

He stands there for an awfully long time. 

At some point he reaches in and pulls out a box of eggs. Then he’s on autopilot, and he’s cracking them into a bowl and he’s whisking them. Out come a frying pan, a load of spinach, and a butter dish and

\-------------

He wakes to find himself sprawled on the kitchen floor. 

Oh hell, he must have just had yet another seizure. They’re getting more and more frequent and frankly it’s a miracle that neither Pepper nor Natasha walked in to find him splayed out and twitching. 

When he’s finally confident that his legs will hold his weight, he drags himself to his feet and discovers that his omelette is ruined beyond repair. How milk ended up in it and all over the work top, he has no clue; he’d taught himself to cook out of necessity while he was still in MIT and he knows perfectly well that you don’t put milk in an omelette. 

Yet there it is, full of milk. 

He sighs deeply. He’s going to have to do something with it or Pepper will wonder what on Earth he’s been doing back here. And that will undoubtedly lead to questions he doesn’t want to answer. 

He shakes his head and flips the ring on. He supposes he can try to boil the milk off. 

\-------------

It’s a complete disaster. He cleans the kitchen to his new obsessive levels and plates it up anyway. If nothing else, the two of them can have a laugh over it. 

\-------------

He ambles back into the main cabin to find Pepper watching a News broadcast featuring senator Sterns. He’s immediately sure that she won’t find his culinary disaster funny. 

He tries to make a joke out of it anyway, but she’s not even slightly amused. 

“Tony, what are you not telling me?”

He almost tells her. Almost spills his entire guts. He knows she sees the sadness in his eyes when he suggests not going home, practically pleads that they take some more time off.

But then he sees that she’s upset too and carries right on not telling her.

\-------------

When they get back to California, he chokes back the guilt he still feels and stumbles off down to his workshop. 

Pepper doesn’t follow him.

He stays down there for three days.

\-------------

It’s now the 3rd of May and he clambers into his prized hot-rod and gets J.A.R.V.I.S to pull up anything and everything he’s managed to find on Anton and Ivan Vanko. 

What he sees displayed before him does not fill him with confidence. It doesn’t help that he agrees with the assessment that it was Howard who stole the designs, not the other way round. But what’s done is done, and he’ll just have to deal with the fallout. 

He stares at the holograms wondering what the hell he’s going to do. 

\-------------

He still sat staring when Rhodey finds him. He’s so exhausted and spaced out that he doesn’t even notice the Lieutenant Colonel approaching until he’s stood right next to him. And then all he can do is gaze unfocused in his general direction.

He knows that Rhodey is getting more and more worried the longer he sits there, so he tries to get out of the car. He immediately collapses. Rhodey has to half carry him to his desk. 

He yanks his reactor out to find that yet another core has been depleted, and he knows from the Airman’s wide-eyed horror that he’s finally started to work out what’s going on. People often forget that Rhodey also attended MIT and is a clever and intelligent individual in his own right, so his question about his ‘high tech crossword’ is rhetorical really. 

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

No Rhodey, he really does. He has to protect Pepper from the truth. 

\-------------

He spends the next three weeks in a complete daze. He stays out of the public eye completely and his health gets worse and worse. He burns through another goddamn core and his blood toxicity rockets up to nearly 80%

He spends most of his time either in the ‘shop or in the gymnasium, away from Pepper, Happy and Natasha, where they can’t see him collapsing every other hour and coughing up blood and black phlegm and can’t see the patch work of black that’s covering most of his chest and upper arms.

He can’t do any of his workouts and manual labour is also beyond him by this point, so he starts working on a theoretical Mark VI suit.

He doesn’t know why, he’ll be dead long before it’s ready to use. So for now, it’s simply something to do. 

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S begs him repeatedly to tell Pepper. He ignores the A.I and starts making plans so that she never has to walk in on his dead body. He’s thinking a disaster at sea would work. Take a yacht out and just never come back.

It would definitely be easier on everyone, if they never have to find his body. 

\-------------

It’s May 29th again. 

He’s forty years old. He honestly can’t believe he’s still alive. 

For reasons he’s not sure of, his birthday party is still going ahead. He wants nothing more than to send all the guests home and to just spend the night snuggled up to Pepper in front of the TV. But he’s got to keep the façade up. Just a couple more weeks tops, and he can disappear out into the pacific and just let it finally all be over. 

He’s just got to get through tonight.

\-------------

He examines the cross hatching on his chest. His blood toxicity is up to 89%. He’s not sure he’s going to make it those couple of extra weeks. 

Romanoff walks in. He tries to play along with her flirting, but he just can’t stop thinking about the fact that he’s going to be dead in less than a week. 

She’s dabbing more makeup onto his face and he just breaks.

“Can I ask you a question, hypothetically? Bit odd. If this was your last ever birthday, that you were ever gonna have, how would you celebrate it?”

“I’d do what I wanted to do, with whoever I wanted to do it with.”

He thinks about that. He knows exactly what he wants to do. 

\-------------

He weaves through the crowds of party guests. 

He finds Pepper. 

He drags her upstairs and locks his bedroom door.

He pulls her into his arms, lets the tears flow freely, and he tells her everything. 

“Truth is, dearest peppery-pepper, my Pepper Potts, I’m only mostly gay, I’ve been madly in love with you for nearly ten years and now I’ve only got a week to live.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Iron Man II Transcript of Evil Doom!](http://www.allreadable.com/mv1188bEAGW)
> 
> much screwing round of dates, but mostly from the same timeline as last chapter again.
> 
> I'm sure there was a load of other stuff that i was gonna mention here, like the fact the McFlurry thing is completely Housemate-Ian's fault and that BenBen's face when I told him I'd written 7000 words in one day was completely hilarious, but I can't remember most of it. So these notes may be subject to change!
> 
> Polite British nods to you all and I hope you enjoy!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'lo guys :)  
> Got a couple of questions I want to ask you guys; they're in the end notes.
> 
> Personally, I'm quite surprised how close to the film I managed to keep this.  
> And now this is out the way, we can barrel right on through to The Avengers :D

Late-Evening, May 29th.

When he says he tells Pepper everything, he really does mean _everything._

He starts with being kidnapped age four and ends with Romanoff telling him she’d do whatever she wanted to do. He tells her all about being eight and taking up martial arts and gymnastics and hiding it from the world. He shares with her all his MIT experiences, both the good and the bad, and reminisces fondly about all the times Rhodey protected him and stood up for him. Of all the competitions he attended using his fake IDs. And of creating DUM-E and earning all his degrees and PhDs.

He explains why he never drinks. And why he doesn’t sleep around. And why he pretends that he does both.

He tells her in a dull lifeless voice all about Howard and Maria, and why he hates Captain America.

He cries as he explains to her why Jarvis is his real dad. He cries even harder through the retelling of the car crash and losing his real dad.

They both smile when he reaches being age twenty four and he gets to share the real story of meeting Happy.

They smile even more when they talk about her barging into his office for the first time.

He finally admits that he’s been hopelessly in love with her ever since that day.

He wants to stop there, finish on that high note, curl his arms tighter around her and never let her go. Sleep away the night, happy and safe, their limbs entangled, pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

But he still as to go through Afghanistan and the god-awful waterboarding and why he has water-induced flashbacks. And tell her about losing Yinsen. 

Tell her about the Reactor and the palladium poisoning. 

Tell her that he’s dying.

He draws in a shaky breath and starts to force the words out. 

\-------------

Somehow he gets through it.

And if somehow they end up with him being the one curled up in her arms, well he’s not complaining. 

\-------------

He wakes to the sound of forceful banging on the door and Rhodey’s panicked voice reaching him from the other side of it.

“Tony! Tony! You need to get out here now! Tony!”

J.A.R.V.I.S hurriedly informs him that he’s needed downstairs immediately.

Both he and Pepper are up off the bed in an instant. The following morning they’re both very much wishing they hadn’t bothered. 

\-------------

In his and Pepper’s absence, the party guests had gotten more than a little out of control. 

Seriously out of control.

How the hell had a bunch of civilians caused this much damage? The place was trashed! There was a goddamn hole in the ceiling! And another three that punched straight through the walls into the public gym! There was smashed glass everywhere, bottles and their contents shattered against every available surface, and furniture and weights and other gym equipment scattered haphazardly all over the place. Someone had even managed to rip one of the kitchen granite counter-tops off and leave it lying cracked against the living room steps. 

And despite all of this, the party seemed to still be continuing in full drunken swing.

Tony and Pepper stood at the bottom of the stairs with Rhodey and gawped in horror. What the hell was going on?!

\-------------

The answer to that question comes only twenty seconds later when one of the party guests throws a watermelon in the air and it explodes. 

Tony can recognise the whirr of his repulsors anywhere. He hears it now and his heart leaps up into his throat. 

Unfortunately for her, ‘Natalie’ chooses that moment to appear. A violently angry Pepper rounds on her in an instant. 

“Miss Potts-”

“Oh don’t you ‘Miss Potts’ me. We’re on to you Romanoff!”

Tony sees the split second of surprise in the agent’s eyes before it’s smothered by an obviously faked look of confusion. Pepper’s having none of it though and she rips into Romanoff, demanding to know why the supposed ‘world’s best spy’ allowed a bunch of drunken morons to get their hands on repulsor tech and start blowing her house up with it. 

She’s still screeching at the completely flabbergasted agent when Tony turns to Rhodey; he can see Happy racing towards them and he knows that he’ll get Pepper out of danger. Which just leaves them with dealing with the out of control party guests. 

“Think you got what it takes to wear a suit?”

He takes Rhodey following him down to the workshop with a grin on his face as a strong affirmative.

\-------------

Tony can tell that Rhodey falls in love with the redesigned Mark II Armour instantly. He’d started modifying it more than a month ago, altering it specifically to fit Rhodey’s build and stature, and it’s obvious that Rhodey has worked that out. The look of amazed gratitude he’s giving Tony reassures him that he made the right choice when choosing Ironman’s successor. 

He smiles back at his best friend as he dons his own Mark IV Armour. 

Time to go deal with a bunch of drunken lunatics. 

\-------------

He gives Rhodey a very quick crash course in piloting the Armour. A _very_ quick crash course. Rhodey’s still stumbling around a lot after the rushed two minutes of do’s and don’ts, but it’s better than nothing. 

It turns out to be enough when all they have to do is stand in the hallway looking imposing. Rhodey punctuates his sharp “get out” by slamming down his faceplate. Tony silently appreciates the Airman’s flair for the dramatic

Everyone leaves immediately. 

Everyone except the two delinquents waving the battered Mark III armour gloves with a damaged Mark II Arc Reactor dangling between them anyway. 

Those two seem to think it’s hilarious to stick around and take pot shots at them. 

It’s a bit of a problem for Tony and Rhodey. Not because the weakened repulsor blasts are doing any major damage to them, fully armoured as they are, but because the other two guys _aren’t_ armoured and therefore they can’t shoot back. 

Tony and Rhodey are still trying to work out how to get close to the two crazy drunken civilians without injuring them when they decide it’s a fantastic idea to aim the two gauntlets _at each other._ A beam starts to form between the two repulsors and Tony knows instantly that it isn’t going to end well. 

Jesus Christ, do these two have a death wish?

Tony launches himself at the furthest away of the two, leaving the closer one to Rhodey. He yanks out the wires connecting the glove to the Arc, and shields the idiot, but he wasn’t quite quick enough to completely halt the resulting blast. 

The remainder of the windows blow outwards and all the room’s furnishings are blasted away. Tony himself is thrown hard against the wall, and he has to twist in mid-air to stop himself from crushing Drunken Idiot Number One. Across the room, Rhodey has hauled Idiot Number Two behind a chunk of worktop and Tony can hear him spewing obscenities at the guy. 

Dust begins to settle around them and Idiot One is up and half-running, half-limping away before Tony has even managed to stop his own head from spinning. 

Rhodey clambers over to him and tries to hand him one of the Mark III gauntlets.

“How the fuck did they get their hands on these Tony?”

Tony wishes he knew. 

\-------------

Tony vaguely remembers fiddling with the two gloves and the reactor in the kitchen a couple of days ago. He suspects he might have forgotten to take them back to the workshop. 

Tony spends a few minutes cursing palladium to hell and back for cutting huge holes in his memory. 

Rhodey fondly calls him an idiot before throwing Tony’s arm over his shoulder and telling him it’s not his fault. 

Tony wishes he could believe him. 

\-------------

Pepper comes back into the building just as Rhodey is hauling Tony back down to the workshop to the disassembly unit. Using the suit with his blood toxicity this high has taken a serious toll on him, and even with J.A.R.V.I.S locking the suit joints up, he’s having a lot of trouble keeping upright. 

Pepper and Rhodey realise just how bad a shape he’s in when they get his helmet off and see the dribble of black ooze running from the corner of his mouth.

They both look sickened and he resigns himself to having them constantly worry and fuss over him for the next few days. 

After that he’ll be dead.

He tries not to think about it. 

\-------------

Rhodey gets a phone call from his senior officers and disappears off upstairs, leaving Pepper to manhandle Tony by herself. Which he guesses is why she drags a load of his gymnastic crash mats into a pile and lowers him onto those instead of trying to carry him upstairs to bed. She’s acquired a blanket from somewhere and she throws it over him before crawling onto the mats next to him and tucking his face against her neck. 

He’s almost dozed off when Rhodey reappears. 

Apparently the Military and the government have already heard about how badly his party just ended and they’re blaming Tony for the mess. They’re saying that he clearly can’t be trusted with the Ironman Armour if he can’t even stop a couple of stupid rich boys from getting their hands on a single pair of gloves. 

Tony tells Rhodey to placate them by taking the Mark II armour to his Air Force base. 

Rhodey thinks that that is an incredibly dumb idea.

They argue and Rhodey ends up taking the Mark II to his Air Force base. 

He falls asleep wondering where on Earth Romanoff has disappeared off to.

\-------------

Early morning, May 30th.

He’s feeling considerably better this morning. Well, he feels no worse than he usually does these days. Which is really not that great actually, but it is better than last night. 

Pepper is sat up next to him when he finally opens his eyes, voicing quick, clipped orders down her phone. He listens for a minute and he realises that she’s insisting to whomever is on the other end that last night was not Tony’s fault, and that no, they cannot requisition the Ironman Armour. 

There’s a pause in the conversation and she notices he’s awake. Leaning over, she runs a quick hand through his hair before mouthing ‘Coffee?’ at him. He smiles and nods gratefully at her, and she hustles off towards the workshop kitchenette, still talking into her phone at a million miles a minute. 

He decides right then and there to do something nice for her. Especially as she’s clearly more than a little stressed out and yet is still defending him. 

He hauls himself up and asks J.A.R.V.I.S where the nearest fresh doughnut café is. 

\-------------

It’s only ten minutes down the road so he takes the suit. He supposes he could have just driven and saved himself from the little bit of accelerated palladium toxicity, but he was a little worried he’d have a fit or something and crash if he took a car. At least in the suit J.A.R.V.I.S could catch him if anything went wrong. 

When he got there, he was fully planning on just skipping in, grabbing a dozen-box and flying straight home to Pepper again. But he was quite enjoying the fresh air and he just couldn’t resist the novelty of eating a doughnut inside a doughnut; he’d only be out 15 minutes longer than he’d been planning to be anyway. 

So he shrugged his shoulders, flew up into the doughnut model, and did exactly that. 

\-------------

“Sir! I’m gonna have to ask you to exit the doughnut!”

Well that wasn’t a line he’d ever been expecting to hear in his life. Especially not from Fury of all people. 

\-------------

He ends up back inside the café.

Oddly enough, Fury seems to be very understanding of his situation. He keeps calling Tony ‘kid’ and ‘son’, basically calls the government a bunch of useless jackasses, starts enthusiastically asking him his opinion on the Avengers Initiative and at one point, reaches across the table and brushes his fingertips over the square black rash pattern just visible over the collar of the armour. 

Then Romanoff rocks up out of nowhere and his demeanour changes instantly. Given the sudden change, Tony guesses that he’s putting up an act to fool the agent into thinking that he doesn’t care for Tony, so plays along. But he’s left wondering why Fury wants to keep Romanoff in the dark in the first place. Or better yet, why Fury even cares about him at all.

There follows a lot of banter about Rhodey taking the suit, and about Tony not being the centre of the universe, but he catches Fury winking at him from behind Romanoff’s back a few times and as soon as the younger agent gets up and wanders off again, he switches back to being calm and concerned. He starts apologising for sending Romanoff undercover after him, muttering something about some council or another insisting on it, and asking him if he’s told Pepper and Rhodey about his Palladium issues.

Tony is very thoroughly confused. 

So much so that when Fury suddenly starts yelling again about problems in the Southwest Region, he’s completely off guard and really not prepared for the needle that gets stabbed into his neck. 

It’s only due to years of self-control training that he doesn’t turn and punch Romanoff in the face then and there. 

Instead he makes a quip about having his kidneys stolen and silently prays she doesn’t realise his twitch was anything more than a reflexive cringe. 

Fury, however, raises an eyebrow at him and he quietly wonders how much he knows and tries not to panic. 

On the plus side whatever was in that needle is doing wonders. He feels like he can breathe properly for the first time in weeks. 

Lithium Dioxide apparently. He really should have thought of that himself. 

Oh and apparently there’s something he hasn’t tried with Arc Reactor. He tries not to get his hopes up to much, but knowing there might still be a solution sounds just like the miracle he needs. 

\-------------

Fury tells him to get his ass back to the house and that he’ll meet him there. 

He arrives first, doughnut box still in hand, only to find that Pepper has gone over to Stark Industries to get some or other essential paperwork filed. Well, so says the post-it stuck to the workshop coffee machine anyway. He smiles through a sigh and drops the box onto the countertop.

\-------------

He’s still wandering aimlessly around the ‘shop, occasionally tapping the toe of his work-boots against DUM-E’s base when J.A.R.V.I.S alerts him to a fleet of 4x4s coming up the driveway. He hurriedly throws on a change of clothes and staggers into the hallway to meet them. 

Fury’s there obviously, as is Romanoff, but so is Agent Coulson, whom he hasn’t seen for several months, and a bunch of people that he mentally labels ‘baby agents’. 

He watches as they spread out and start to crawl over the damaged remains of his house. He’s not too worried, as he knows J.A.R.V.I.S will stop them from poking their noses too far into anything they shouldn’t, but he still feels a twinge of annoyance at their blatant disregard for his right to privacy. 

He shrugs, knowing that complaining would be futile, and saunters into the remains of his kitchen to pour himself a drink. Leaving Coulson and Romanoff to also wander off, Fury follows him and helps himself to some of Tony’s tonic water. Tony glances at him questioningly, but gets nothing but a sly smile in response. He really wants to know what this guy’s angle is, but he has a strong feeling that he’s not going to find out until the rest of the agents have gone. 

He flips a couple of chairs and a coffee table back upright and drags them out onto the patio, Fury still trailing after him. 

Perhaps now, with the relative privacy he’ll get some answers.

\-------------

Fury is both incredibly open with information and annoyingly cryptic at the same time.

It’s more than a little infuriating. 

Oddly, the first thing Fury tells him is to call him Nick. Tony says that’s fine so long as he stops calling him Stark in return. 

Turns out that, despite the age gap between them, Nick was good friends with Jarvis when Tony was little. Very good friends in fact. They were practically best mates. So much so, that he helped Jarvis find and employ Tony’s Sensei and Coaches and helped provide all of Tony’s fake competition IDs. So much so, that he’d promised Jarvis that he’d ‘watch out for his kid’ if anything ever happened to him. 

Tony asks him what the hell he’s been doing for the last twenty-three years then. How come he was left alone with only Stane after the car crash? Why did he not step in when he was nearly given a life prison sentence by the Japanese government after that huge misunderstanding with Tiberius Stone in ’93? What about that horrendous six months in ’99 with Rumiko Fujikawa? And where the hell was he just last year when he was kidnapped by terrorists and held in a cave for three months? The only reply he gets is yet another cryptic smile and a “what makes you think I didn’t step in?”

Not exactly a helpful answer.

Tony also really wants to know why this is the first he’s hearing of this. Unfortunately, Nick doesn’t seem inclined to answer that question either.

Thankfully, he does find out that Nick hated Howard just as much as Tony still does, and he’s more than happy to divulge his reasons for that. There’s a lot of cussing and general name calling, and even more disparaging of Howard’s parental skills, a few “Jarvis and I wish we could have gotten you out of Howard’s grasp all together”s, but as soon as he mentions Jarvis’ funeral and Nick’s lack of attendance, he shuts down completely and leaves Tony with a whole load more of unanswered questions. 

Before he can attempt to tease any further information out of the Director, Romanoff and Coulson reappear and the conversation switches immediately to impersonal language, Anton and Ivan Vanko, and the large case with ‘Property of H. Stark’ written across the lid. 

That’s something else Tony’s still left wondering about; why it is that Nick doesn’t want two of his top agents to know that they have a history, if you can even call it that.

He guesses that question will have to wait for another day, because next thing he knows Nick’s telling him to take another look into Arc Reactor tech and marching off with a dramatic whirl of his leather trench coat.

Tony’s left bewildered and even more confused than he was before the conversation started. 

\-------------

Romanoff reckons she’s disabled all communications in and out of the house. Tony does manage to avoid laughing in her face, but only just. 

He’ll have to commend J.A.R.V.I.S on his ‘playing dead’ skills later.

\-------------

Agent threatens to taze him if he tries to run off. He thinks that’s a bit harsh, given that he has an _electromagnet_ embedded in his chest _keeping him alive_. But then just as he starts to walk away, Agent claps his hand on his shoulder and gives him that small smile that barely a smile at all, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, Coulson was only joking.

Huh, maybe the guy does have a sense of humour after all. 

\-------------

Just after Noon, May 30th.

He drags Howard’s crate down to the ‘shop.

He stares at it for quite a long while before finally managing to summon the courage to open it.

Inside, he finds the original Arc Prototype blueprints, a bunch of periodic tables, some notebooks and three film reel canisters. 

He doesn’t really want anything to do with all this stuff, doesn’t want anything to do with anything that was Howard’s at all, but if the clue to his salvation is in here somewhere then he can’t afford not to.

He takes a deep breath and picks up the largest of the three film reels.

\-------------

The old film runs in the background. Tony does his best to pretend it’s anyone other than Howard talking on it. 

He’s thumbing through the old note books, but he doubts he’s going to find anything of use in them; most of it is gibberish and there are more mathematical errors in them than a middle schooler would have made in a senior’s math test after pulling two consecutive all-nighters. If it wasn’t for the neatness of the handwriting and diagrams, Tony would have believed that Howard wrote all this while near-black out drunk. 

He sighs, the hope that Nick had given him fading fast.

Well, at least Pepper will be there for him in his last few days. 

\-------------

He hears his own name coming from the still playing film reel. It makes him look up because he doesn’t have a single memory of Howard ever using the shortened version of his name; he was lucky if got an ‘Anthony’ rather than just a ‘boy’. But there Howard is, calling him Tony and shouting at his four-year-old self for nicking sections of the city model behind his back. 

Tony shakes his head and looks back down at the last notebook, torn between smiling at his younger-self’s antics and frowning at Howard’s tone and words. He leafs quickly through the notebook’s pages, pausing whenever he finds something that’s slightly less nonsensical that the rest. 

Then he hears Howard using his name again. 

The speech that follows leaves him feeling nauseous. 

Greatest creation indeed. That’s all he ever was to Howard, a _thing_ he made to unsuccessfully try and fill the void left by Captain America.

To Howard he was never anything more than an inferior replacement part.

Then he looks at the Expo Model in the background again. Really looks at it.

No way? Could it really be that simple?

He needs to get his hands on the actual model. 

Right now.

\-------------

Now he’s definitely sure that Agent was joking.

He had absolutely no problem leaving the house at all. Coulson just stood smiling and watched him leave.

He’ll have to pay more attention to the man in the future. Pepper seems to like him so they might even end up friends.

Well, he might if can get his hands on that model and ensure that he has a future to pay more attention with anyway. 

Good job he knows exactly where the model is then, isn’t it?

\-------------

He gets half way to the Stark Industries business park when he realises that he forgot to grab the rest of the doughnut box for Pepper.

He pulls over and buys her some fresh fruit instead. Not as good as doughnuts, but it’s the thought that counts right?

\-------------

When he gets to the Head Office building, Pepper is in her new office still making and taking phone calls about the birthday party and the Mark II armour. She’s obviously even more stressed out than she was this morning, so he just smiles at her and doesn’t interrupt. 

He wanders around the office aimlessly, poking at all his stuff stacked semi-organised in the corner. Behind him, the television is on and some show’s host or someone is making accusations about Tony and questioning Pepper’s CEO qualifications. He notices Pepper frowning at it and mutes it, pushing down his own wave of frustration as he does so. 

He’s just pulling the dust sheets off what he knows to be the old Expo model when he realises Pepper has finally managed to put the phone down. He hurries over, shoves the strawberry box onto to the desk and pulls the spare desk chair round next to her before dropping into it. 

She turns towards him, frustration palpable, and drops her head into his lap, groaning in exasperation. 

“Lawyers are all assholes and I’m beginning to understand your distain for all authority figures.”

Well that’s what he thinks she says, the words being somewhat muffled by his legs. He chuckles and pushes his thumbs into the tense knots of her shoulders. This time her groan is one of appreciation.

When she eventually sits back up and tugs her hair back into place, he immediately launches into a retelling of this morning. 

“Wait. So Fury’s been your actual godfather all along?”

Yup, Pepper’s just as confused as he is.

But she’s also ecstatic that he has a few extra weeks and that there might just be a cure after all. So there’s that. 

\-------------

“Oh god, it’s like when I donated the art collection all over again. Please tell me my memory is gonna start functioning properly again soon.”

Turns out Pepper is allergic to strawberries. 

Oops.

\-------------

Romanoff and Happy walk in just as Tony is poking at the spin-y metal contraption thingy on Pepper’s desk. Pepper is laughing at the childish glee lighting up his eyes as he keeps trying to stop it from turning, and they both laugh when they see the look of pure confusion written across Romanoff’s face as she watches from the doorway. Happy just stands with a fond smile and announces that Pepper’s flight out to the New York Expo is leaving in 25 minutes. 

Romanoff eventually shakes herself free of her daze and hustles over to get some forms signed, falling back into character perfectly. Then Pepper is headed out the door with Happy, pausing to hug Tony and drop a kiss onto his forehead and assure him that they’ll see each other tomorrow, and suddenly he’s alone with Romanoff again. 

\-------------

He asks her why she bothering to keep up the PA façade when Pepper and Happy already know she’s a S.H.I.E.L.D spy.

She replies by ignoring him and asking when he and Pepper started getting along because they’ve done nothing but argue since she met the two of them. 

Tony grins viciously and tells her it was his idea and it was all just an act designed purely to wind her up and make her life difficult.

Romanoff is temporarily struck dumb. Then she calls him childish, irresponsible and a self-centred asshole.

Tony reposts by asking which one of them is a lying spy who lies and stabs people in the neck with syringes.

She storms out after that and angrily demands that he goes home immediately. 

Well, that could’ve gone better.

He curses himself for being so impulsive and fantastic at pissing people off; he knows from the hacked databases that Romanoff is a potential Avenger candidate, so they’ll have to mend their fences eventually as they could well end up working with each other. 

Still mentally berating himself, he starts to gather up the Expo model sections. 

One problem at a time, he tells himself. Palladium poisoning first, Black Widow relationship issues later. 

\-------------

When he gets all the sections outside, he has a moment where he has to curse himself for not bringing a car with a bigger trunk; a convertible Audi isn’t exactly ideal for hauling round great big chunks of display board. 

Then again, he is an engineer. He’ll work something out. 

\-------------

He’s not entirely sure how he doesn’t get pulled over on the drive back. 

He did make sure the sections were tied down securely, but they didn’t exactly look stable to be honest. 

But he’s never been one to question random occurrences of good luck, so he shrugs it off and he and DUM-E get on with reconstructing the model down in the ‘shop. 

\-------------

As soon as Jarvis pulls up the 3D hologram of the model, he knows his hunch was correct. 

He flicks more and more things away from the hologram and there it is.

A single, brand new atom.

A viable palladium replacement. 

It rankles a bit that it was Howard who discovered it originally, but given that the old man couldn’t do anything with it, Tony decides that he can credit himself for all the actual work. 

Now he just has to do the impossible and synthesis it.

He always did like a challenge. 

\-------------

He starts smashing holes through the walls. Pepper probably isn’t going to be pleased with him for it, but he’s only doing it so that he can save his own life, so he figures she’ll give him a free pass. Besides, half of the house is still trashed from the party; a few more holes will be hardly noticeable. 

He swings the sledgehammer again. He hopes she’ll be OK with it anyway.

\-------------

Just before Sunset, May 30th.

J.A.R.V.I.S lets Coulson push through the door into the workshop; Tony’s half way through unpacking and connecting the sections of his old particle accelerator together. He’d designed it alongside PEGASUS and had it manufactured years ago, just to prove to some random critic that he could. Once he’d had it delivered though, he’d realised that he didn’t actually have the floor space to set it up, so he’d boxed it all up and shoved it into storage. He’d barely thought about it since then. 

Now, he’s glad that he kept it. He’s equally _not glad_ that he repurposed the supporting frame a long time ago. Coulson kindly doesn’t comment on the stack of books holding up one section, nor on the motorbike holding up another. 

Instead he makes a deadpan joke about his earlier ‘breaking of the perimeter’ which Tony happily goes along with. They trade a few more jests and faux-insults, silently challenging one another to be the first to lose control of their straight faces. Tony’s just glad he’s figured out the man’s sense of humour. It’s actually very similar to his own; no wonder Pepper likes him.

Then Agent finds the perfectly shaped item to level out the book-held section of piping. He winces a bit over it being an old Captain America shield prototype, but right now he’ll use whatever he can to get the job done. He even manages to push through the wave of revulsion that being _handed it_ brings. Probably sensing his discomfort, Agent only pauses for a second before allowing Tony to carry on with the deadpan banter. 

They trade a few more jokes about secret stuff (that Coulson must know Tony will hack into S.H.I.E.L.D to find out about later, surely?) and then he’s leaving, heading to New Mexico to deal with said secret situation.

Suddenly Tony’s alone again. 

He grabs the spirit level and gets back to work.

\-------------

Over the course of the next night and most of the following morning, he jerry-rigs the rest of the piping together, hurriedly throws together a Mark IV reactor using a spare Mark III, shoves the last of the electromagnets and the crystal prism into place and connects all the power up to his now assembled particle accelerator. 

The he steps back and allows himself to admire his handiwork. He smiles and J.A.R.V.I.S starts the power sequence. He watches enraptured as the plasma starts to form. 

His workshop gets neatly sliced by the resulting plasma beam because he really should have thought about aiming it before he started. But hey, he just made a brand new element so he can live with a little bit of damage. 

It glows a light electric blue, which is kind of cool. 

Plus, it’s totally compatible with the Mark IV Arc.

Mission Accomplished!

\-------------

Late-afternoon, May 31st.

J.A.R.V.I.S is running diagnostics on the new Arc and he’s trying to get DUM-E and YOU to clear some stuff up when he gets a phone call from a blocked number.

He answers it, assuming it’s Coulson calling from New Mexico. 

It’s not.

It’s Ivan Vanko. 

Apparently he’s not as dead as the French authorities told him. 

He traces the call, only half listening to the stream of threats Vanko is spewing at him. He turns to the screen displaying the tracking software readout and watches as it zooms in closer and closer to the Eastern seaboard, closer and closer to New York.

New York, where Pepper is. 

Vanko cuts the call before the trace is completed. 

It doesn’t matter; he sees an article on Justin Hammer and the Expo on a different screen and he puts two and two together himself. 

He does not like the four that he gets. 

\-------------

The new element tastes like coconut. 

J.A.R.V.I.S is not happy with him for swopping it in before he’d finished the diagnostics, but needs must. 

It hurts like a bitch to start with, as the new element counteracts and neutralises the worst of the palladium poisoning. But when the searing burn starts to taper off, it’s almost like he can feel the power output throbbing through his veins. 

It’s one hell of an adrenaline rush. 

He cackles like a mad man and goes to suit up. 

If Hammer or Vanko get so much as within 10 foot of Pepper, then god forgive him for what he’ll do in retaliation.

Stane had to learn that the hard way. He has a feeling these two will too.

\-------------

Early-evening, May 31st.

He jets it from Malibu to New York as fast as he can manage. He arrives just as Hammer is prancing around on stage in front of a worrying number of drones. 

For some reason Rhodey is on stage too in the heavily modified Mark II armour. 

The first words out of the Colonel’s mouth are “I told you taking the armour to the Air Force was a bad idea Tony!” looking at the modifications, Tony concedes he may have had a point.

The next ones are “I can’t believe they ordered me to be a dancing monkey for Hammer of all people!” And yeah, Tony thinks that’s ridiculous too. 

Then Tony lets him know that Vanko is alive and working with Hammer. Which means that Rhodey’s next words are “oh shit man, you gotta be kidding me! The little shit!”

Rhodey’s making a lot of valid points tonight.

Then they both round on Hammer.

\-------------

Hammer tries denying his involvement. Claims he has no idea where Vanko is because ‘he’s dead right?’ He’s a terrible liar and Tony can see right through him.

But then he has to give up interrogating the little weasel, because Rhodey starts sounding panicked and Tony’s lock on warnings are blaring. 

Then all the Hammer-drones are powering up and aiming at him too. Rhodey is practically screaming apologies at him and repeating over and over that it’s not him doing it. And yeah, Tony really should have listened to his best friend when he said taking the Mark II was a bad idea. 

Worried about all the civilians present, Tony rockets off out of the building.

\-------------

The compromised Mark II and the rest of the drones follow him. Literally the only good thing about the whole situation is that the coms still work and Rhodey can shout out warnings and directions to him as he goes. 

He gets J.A.R.V.I.S to try and override the Mark II, but he can tell immediately that the AI is not going to get very far with only remote access to work with. 

He leaves J.A.R.V.I.S to try anyway and switches his concentration back to dodging missiles and bullets, trying to stay away from the most crowded areas of the Expo. 

Who knows, maybe J.A.R.V.I.S will get lucky?

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S is _not_ having any luck and a kid in an Ironman mask nearly getting his head blown off by a drone really drives it home that he needs to get this fight away from the Expo. 

The Hammer-Drones are still all on his tail, so he swoops under a highway bridge and tries to use the supports to pick some of them off. It’s not as effective as he was hoping, but a couple of them explode. He thinks that makes at least four down now. 

Just a whole load of others left to go

\-------------

Rhodey informs that a pack of the drones just peeled off back towards the Expo. Great, guess he’ll just have to go back then won’t he?

Turning in a wide arc back towards Flushing Meadows, he dodges yet another hail of fire and tries not to think too hard about all the property damage lawsuits he’s undoubtedly going to end up facing. 

\-------------

Going back to the Expo works out better than he was expecting. 

He manages to use the Unisphere in the centre of the park to wipe out most of the drones still following him. Rhodey is less impressed. In fact he’s pretty sure he hears the Airman screaming his manly lungs out as they both pivot around inside the metal globe.

He promises not to tease him about it later.

Well, not much anyway. 

\-------------

Somehow he temporarily loses Rhodey. 

And then immediately finds him again when he’s slammed sideways into the Oracle greenhouse globe by him. 

There’s a bit of a scuffle, with Rhodey still shouting apologies but then the Mark II is suddenly powering down. 

He’s still wandering what happened when a video-link displaying agent Romanoff pops up on his HUD. She’s managed to get to the central control panel for both the suit and the drones and has restored control back to Rhodey. 

Yeah, he’s definitely gonna make an effort to patch things up with the agent after this. Teach her some more Martial Arts or something. 

He reckons she’d like that.

\-------------

He gets to talk to Pepper too. He’s inordinately pleased that she’s unharmed. She’s even managed to get Hammer under control, bless her. 

And she’s very happy to hear that he’s not dying anymore. Very happy. 

Romanoff cuts them both off before they get too overly mushy, but he’s glad that he came clean and told her he loved her. 

It seems to be working out great so far. 

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S finishes rebooting Rhodey’s suit and Tony hauls him back to his feet. 

Once he’s up and stable, they laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation and exchange a round of apologies; Rhodey for shooting at Tony, and Tony for making him take the suit in the first place. 

Then they start arguing about tactics. It’s mostly just good natured banter really, but it distracts them both enough that the Hammer-Drones arrive before they’re ready for them. They end up stuck in the low ground surrounded by the buggers. 

They make it work anyway.

Repulsor blasts work pretty damn well against them, as does punching through their heads and chests, and Rhodey sprays them all with a seemingly endless supply of high calibre bullets. 

Tony’s arm mounted laser rays finish the last of them off. 

Yeah, they make it work.

\-------------

Romanoff warns them that they have a final drone incoming.

It turns out to be Ivan. In an armour suit. With another set of his crazy whip attachments. 

Rhodey tries to take him down, but all he does is prove how useless Hammer tech is. 

Then they try all the usual techniques, but Vanko’s suit is obviously made of sterner stuff than his droids were. They get battered around a lot, and both end tangled up in his repulsor whips. 

Then Tony remembers the two idiots from his party two days ago.

(Has it really only been a couple of nights? Wow, a lot has happened in two days)

Rhodey thinks his plan is insane, but he goes along with it anyway. 

This time, they don’t cut the repulsor explosion short. 

No way Vanko survived that. 

\-------------

When he and Rhodey scramble back to their feet and regroup, they find Vanko, down but somehow still miraculously alive. He’s obviously in critical condition and not getting back up any time soon so Tony’s not particularly worried about him. 

At least he’s not until he says “you lose” and his chest piece casing starts flashing red and beeping. As do all the drones. 

They’re obviously all about to blow. 

Oh god, _Pepper._

\-------------

If he thought he flew fast and risky on his way over to New York, it’s nothing compared to how he flies now. 

He doesn’t so much as tap the breaks until he reaches Pepper. And then he only slows down enough to ensure he doesn’t crush her or hurt her through G-Force. 

He grabs her just in time.

Turning in the air, he jets away, Pepper safe in his arms.

\-------------

There’s a lot of yelling once Tony touches them both down on a nearby rooftop.

Pepper quits again. 

After the stress of the last few days he was kinda expecting that. She probably won’t stay quit though, just like the last dozen times. 

She also yells at him for being a reckless idiot. He can half see her point there, but it’s not really fair as it was hardly his fault. He’s defending himself, saying that he actually did OK given the circumstances when she leans in and kisses him. 

Oh god, it’s amazing.

His knees go so weak he would have collapsed if he weren’t still in the suit. 

He pauses to tell her he’s been waiting to do that for ten years. She smiles and pulls him to her lips again. 

Then Rhodey has to go and ruin the moment. 

“It’s true you know. Ten years I’ve been watching the sap pine over you. Ten years I tell you!”

Tony tells him to clear off and find his own roof.

Rhodey points that he was here first and that makes it his roof. 

Pepper laughs and rests her forehead against Tony’s cheek. 

Yeah, he reckons everything will work out just fine.

\-------------

They go back to the New York Apartment. 

Tony hasn’t installed a suit disassembly unit here yet, so he and Rhodey have to yank the Mark IV off by hand. It’s completely in pieces by the time they finish, so Tony consigns it to the scrap pile. The Mark VI deigns are more or less finished anyway so it was going to be out of date soon anyway. 

The Mark II fairs a little better. They have to take a screwdriver set to it, and at one point they have to utilise a set of bolt cutters, but they get it off in a reparable state. Tony promises he’ll have it fixed up ASAP. For now, they stack all the parts in the corner of the front room and start looking longingly towards the bathroom and the shower. 

Once they’re all cleaned up, Happy insists that he take the sofa this time, so Tony and Pepper disappear off into one room, while Rhodey shuffles into the other. 

Tony’s asleep only seconds after his head hits the pillow, Pepper curled up in his arms.

\-------------

8:30am, June 1st.

Coulson calls.

Rhodey’s already up when Tony stumbles into the kitchen to answer the phone, the Airman busy talking away into his own cell phone, probably explaining last night to his superior officers.

Settling on a breakfast bar stool, Tony slides across his answer-call button and Coulson informs him that Fury will be in California to debrief him on the 3rd. He also tells him that he should take a look at the profiles for a guy named Banner and read up on the info they’ve gathered for the goings on in New Mexico. 

Yup. Coulson definitely knows he routinely hacks S.H.I.E.L.D. From the way he’s talking, he probably knows about the Jarvis and Fury situation too. He wants to ask, but Coulson hangs up on him before he can get a word in edgeways. 

Rhodey raises an eyebrow at him as he swears down at the now dead cell phone in his hand. 

Tony sticks his tongue out at him because he’s mature like that. 

Pepper materialises behind him and pinches his tongue between his fingers, grins at him and pushes a glass of orange juice into his hands. 

Rhodey and Happy laugh at him as they watch him squirm.

Wow, how is this his life now? 

\-------------

Noon, June 2nd.

They make it back to California in one piece. 

Rhodey leaves for his Air Base as soon they touch down at the airport, promising to drop by tomorrow morning.

The rest of them are just arriving back at the Malibu house when Agent calls again. This time, he wants Tony to get an SI satellite over Puente Antiguo and forward a set of radiation readings to him. Tony agrees to, he and J.A.R.V.I.S having looked at the info Coulson told him to yesterday. He wants to ask the agent some questions about Dr. Banner and his gamma situation, but has the phone put down on him before he can again. 

Pepper watches him stare despondently at his phone again, then drops her bags at his feet and immediately vanishes off to the Head Office building. 

The situation with the press is still not great, so he can forgive her for that. 

Happy goes with her, so he’s left alone in the house. 

He shrugs and goes to fulfil Agent’s request. As soon as that’s done, he plans on hitting the gym and finding out how badly his training has back-slid while he was busy dying. 

\-------------

Not as badly as he thought actually. 

He’s still a way short of the level of fitness he likes to maintain, and the Arc Reactor is still a chest-constricting pain in the ass, but he can still hold his own. 

He’s stripping out of his gym clothes when he finds a package balanced on top of his MMA belt locker. 

It’s got another one of Pepper’s infamous Post-it notes stuck to it. 

Inside he finds a custom made bright red Kung Fu jacket, with gold piping and stiches, and STARK printed across the back in big gold lettering. 

It totally does not make him cry. Nope.

Pepper’s really quite good at this present malarkey. 

\-------------

Mid-Morning, June 3rd. 

A black SUV, driven by a group of nameless agents, pulls up to the front the house. 

Tony gets in it and ends up outside some random warehouse on the outskirts of LA. 

He shakes his head at the stereotypical spy-ness of it all.

He follows the group inside.

\-------------

Once he’s in the building, the other agents vanish and he’s left alone. 

He’s only sat at the desk he finds for a few minutes before Nick appears out of the shadows. 

What follows is a very long conversation. 

He learns about a group of people known as the World Security Council and that Nick really isn’t their biggest fan, and that they’re not Tony’s either. He also learns that the only people outside of Rhodey, Happy and Pepper who know that Tony’s not actually a drunken, womanising, reckless idiot are Nick, Tony himself, and not surprisingly, Agent Coulson.

Fury suggests it’s probably a good idea if it stays that way for now. The Council don’t see him as much of a threat right now, but that might change if certain ‘Secrets’ come out. Tony agrees.

They also briefly discuss Jarvis and how Nick met him. Apparently Nick was a junior S.H.I.E.L.D agent at the time and he used to spend a lot of time at Stark Mansion running errands for Howard. When he wasn’t doing that, he was down in the mansion kitchens, talking to and helping Jarvis. 

When Tony asks why he never saw him then, Nick tells him that he was forbidden from ever meeting him because Howard didn’t want Tony to ever find out about S.H.I.E.L.D. So whenever Tony came home from boarding school, Nick had to return to headquarters. 

(He’s slightly hurt that Jarvis never mentioned their friendship to him, but he can see why he kept it quiet)

Nick also calls Howard every name under the sun at one point or another during that explanation. Tony gathers that they didn’t exactly get along. 

The biggest surprise of the whole secret meeting though, comes when they switch back to discussing the Avengers Initiative. Nick’s already told him that the Council don’t want him on the team, but now he says that he’s thought of a way round it. 

Romanoff has written a non-too flattering assessment report about him, which states that Tony is not an ideal candidate for the Initiative. They both laugh at the insinuation that he and Ironman are separate entities. Nick is going to forward that report to the Council, tell them Tony’s only been hired on as a consultant, and then actually recruit Tony as an asset under one of his false IDs. 

They discuss that, deciding to use his ‘Anthony Edwards’ alias, and Tony explains somewhat sheepishly why Romanoff has such a poor opinion of him (and promises to do what he can to change it). 

Then Nick starts explaining security clearance levels.

This is where he gets his big surprise.

Initially, Nick tells him that there are six clearance levels, with six being the highest. He explains what each level entails, and informs him that Romanoff and Barton, another Initiative candidate, are both level six operatives. He adds that any other candidates will eventually be given level four or five clearance, with the chance of promotion up to level six if they prove themselves reliable and trustworthy. 

He then turns around and tells Tony that he has level ten clearance, and that Tony himself is going to be granted level nine. 

After he pushes through his confusion and surprise, Tony immediately demands to know what that’s supposed to mean. 

Nick explains that he and J.A.R.V.I.S are now officially the back-up S.H.I.E.L.D database. Anything and everything that happens at or through S.H.I.E.L.D will be filed and copied through to Tony for safe keeping. With how impenetrable J.A.R.V.I.S’s firewalls are, and Tony’s exceptionally good eidetic memory (when it’s not riddled with palladium-sized holes anyway), he’s the safest place for all that information outside of S.H.I.E.L.D's own database.

Tony can’t believe he’s being trusted with that much responsibility.

Nick points out that Tony’s being successfully keeping secrets for years. That literally no one, not even the supposed world’s best spy, has worked out that he’s an MMA master and a gymnast prodigy, that he doesn’t drink alcohol ever, and that he is in no way a playboy. 

He also points out that because of that, Tony is the last person that anyone would ever expect to hold such a position. And that if anyone ever did, and tried to take him, he’s even more qualified to kick ass and defend himself than Romanoff is. 

Agreeing with Nick’s logic, Tony shakily agrees to take on the position on the condition that he can tell Pepper. 

Nick pauses at that, but eventually agrees to his request.

There are a few more odds and ends they discuss, such as the mess General Ross is creating, and the strange goings on in New Mexico (apparently there’s a crazy guy calling himself Thor, the God of Thunder there too now?), but the conversation soon winds up and then he’s signing forms and being ushered back into the black SUV. 

\-------------

7:15pm, June 3rd.

Back home, he and Pepper curl up in front of the workshop TV together, while the last of the construction men upstairs pack up for the night. The house still isn’t full repaired and they’re waiting on a shipment of Tony’s specialised touch screen windows, but it’s nearly habitable again. The lack of glass in the living room is why they’re down here instead up in the main house.

They watch as Hammer’s impending trial is discussed on the news and wonder how long it’ll be before the two of them receive witness summons. Neither of them is particularly looking forward to that.

At some point they start discussing interior design, probably started because Pepper switches over to a home improvement channel. 

That leads on to building design in general and suddenly they’re discussing how inadequate the New York apartment is and why bother trying to find someplace bigger and better when they’re rich and clever enough to just build something themselves?

\-------------

June 6th, 2010. Tony is forty years of age. 

Pepper agrees that the preliminary designs of Stark Tower look amazing.

Then she drags him up to bed. 

It’s barely past lunch time, but he doesn’t exactly complain. 

\-------------

3pm, July 2nd.

Tony’s flicking through the latest set of Database updates.

Coulson calls. 

S.H.I.E.L.D wants to use ‘the consultant.’ 

Tony smiles. 

“Stark at your service, cupcake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First up, dems questions:  
> 1) How Phase Two compliant so you want this to be? I'm currently leaning towards going fully AU with mentions of Thor 2 and possibly Cap 2 after the Avengers movie, but I can run through Iron Man 3 if that's what you guys want?  
> 2) I can't remember question 2! I'll get back to you if I remember...
> 
> Other than that, I hope you're ok with how Fury turned out in this. I tend to lean towards making him an asshole usually, but I thought I'd try something different this time.  
> And yeah, I wondered about the dates for a long time too. I ended up sticking with Tony's birthday being on the 29th of May -as it is printed on his Avengers file- but a lot of other media suggests its actually closer to the 10th of May. I rejigged the Thor and Hulk dates to match, but if anyone notices any issues please do give us holler!  
> Oh and I promise that Tony and Natasha will make up and start an epic Ninja-Bromance with Barton eventually :D  
> Adios Amigos :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since my last post, I've spent _a lot_ of time thinking on all your suggestions and mentally constructing timelines. I think I've more or less decided in what direction to take this fic now, and I'm incredibly grateful for the ideas everyone has provided me with!
> 
> With that in mind, I started piecing together how to tackle the Avengers movie, and it soon became clear that what I really needed to do was what you see written in this chapter.
> 
> Hope it meets all your expectations and I'm always open to more suggestions!
> 
> QUICK EDIT: Phase One's should now all read Phase Two. Tell me if you spot any I've missed!

Tony has been keeping an eye on the Banner situation since Coulson first alerted him to it, even going as far as checking for updates while he was supposed to be paying attention to the proceedings of Hammer’s trial. With all the evidence stacked against him, Hammer’s conviction was a forgone conclusion anyway, and Doctor Banner was fascinating.

Thus, when the trial was concluded and Tony was able to discuss the Avenger’s initiative with Nick, they both agreed that following the Harlem debacle, Banner was a suitable candidate. Blonsky? Not so much.

Unfortunately, the Council weren’t seeing it that way. 

Cue Coulson’s ‘consultant’ call. 

All he has to do is piss Ross off so much the General won’t agree to contract out Blonsky at all.

Pepper bets he can manage it in less than seventy-two hours.

Tony smirks and raises it to twenty-four.

\-------------

July 3rd, 2010.

Once he gets to the bar, it only actually takes him two hours before Ross is ready to murder him with his bare hands. 

And just because he can (and because Ross is a complete dick), when Ross tries to have him thrown out, he buys the bar for ten times its worth and schedules it for demolition.

\-------------

Nick laughs down the phone when he explains what happened. 

Coulson makes a deadpan comment about appropriate usage of funding and the correct procedure for submitting expense claims.

Tony smiles and tells him that S.H.I.E.L.D owes him 3 million dollars then, and hangs up on Coulson first for a change. 

\-------------

Once he’s back on his jet and they’re taxiing out onto the runway, he also calls Pepper.

In retaliation for the 3 million dollar loss, she tries to claim that his bet was twenty-four hours, not two, so he’s lost the bet too.

Tony offers to send her the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of ‘less than’.

Pepper retorts by asking if he understands what ‘less than 1000 feet means.’

Tony points out that the Empire State building is 1250 feet tall, so Stark Tower won’t be that tall in comparison really.

“Aw come on Peps. It’ll only be 1110 feet. That’s only twenty metres above the Chrysler building!”

Pepper sighs in that way that sounds agitated, but Tony knows is actually fond exasperation.

They talk about a whole lot of nothing for the next hour, but Pepper has a company to run, and Tony has a debrief report to finish writing, so they eventually say good bye and promise to see one-another tonight.

\-------------

Nick is leaning on his front door when he gets home that afternoon.

He has a whole bunch of paperwork with him.

Final write-ups of the New Mexico situation apparently. 

Tony sighs and invites Nick in for a drink.

\-------------

Nursing a glass of cool lemonade each, Tony scans down the reports quickly and commits the information within them to memory. 

With the last of the palladium finally leaving his system (helped along by the new reactor and a steady diet of chlorophyll shakes), his memory is thankfully starting to return to optimum performance. He’ll probably still forget everyone’s birthdays and never know more than one or two numbers of his social security number, but any other facts and figures are fair game again. 

Finished with his reading, Nick reclaims the files from him, takes them outside and burns them.

\-------------

When Nick returns indoors they start discussing the Tesseract situation. 

After Thor and the Destroyer more or less levelled Puente Antiguo, the Council had gone completely overboard with paranoia and ordered the old artefact to be hauled out of storage. They want S.H.I.E.L.D to study it and use their findings to develop advanced weapons. Just like Hydra had back in World War II.

Nick is far from happy with this. 

So far, Nick has managed to limit the project to research only, and is trying to steer it in the direction of clean energy generation. But they both know that will only work for so long; Tony is the one in the clean energy game and Nick can only generate believable excuses so many times before it becomes obvious that he’s deliberately stalling progress. 

The only reassuring point is that with Tony only listed as a consultant, he can’t be forced to help with the weapons development himself. 

It’s not a great situation and they’re forced to concede that Tesseract-fuelled weapons are going soon going to be a reality again no matter how much they dislike it. All that’s left to discuss is setting up restrictions and organising damage control. 

\-------------

Two hours later, they’re both more than a little stressed out. Part way through their discussion, Nick had received a text update from Barton on Selvig’s progress, which thankfully stated that none had been made today. But it had been immediately followed by another from Romanoff, detailing the proposed plans for reconstructing the salvaged Destroyer remains.

Nick swears a blue streak that would have put a seasoned sailor to shame.

Tony offers Nick a more fortifying drink. 

Nick declines and suggests they work out their frustrations in a more physical manner. 

Laughing at the unintentional innuendo, Tony leads Nick down to his private gymnasium.

\-------------

He hadn’t had a sparring partner other than Happy since before Afghanistan. He’d never sparred with anyone other than Happy in his own gymnasium at all.

Before his kidnapping, he used to pay a couple of MMA experts to meet him in a small public dojo in Malibu twice or three times a week. He’d always used his own specially developed temporary blonde hair dye on both his hair and beard, worn a pair of vibrant green contact lenses, and paid them from a bank account listed under the name ‘Edward Jarvis’, so the two men had never had any idea that were training with the famous Tony Stark. That way, his secret was still safe.

After Afghanistan, there’d been too much on his mind, and too much time spent dying, to return to his old routine. Not to mention the problem the Arc Reactor presented. He was working on concealing and protecting it, but after trying several other options, he’d admitted that what he really needed -if he wanted to return to proper training and competitions- was realistic synthetic skin. And he was primarily an engineer, not a chemist or a biologist. Sure, he had a PhD in both, but they were far from being his specialist subjects and developing what he needed was taking a fair bit of time.

What he really wanted to do was remove the Reactor outright, but after all his frantic searching last year, he knew that to be an impossibility if he wanted to actually survive the operation. So synthetic skin and carefully padding it was.

Much to his pleasure, Nick’s suggestion makes him realise that there actually was a way to have a proper sparring session without making ground-breaking medical discoveries.

Nick and Coulson already knew about both the Arc Reactor and his Martial Arts training. All he had to do was invite _them_ to spar with him regularly. 

Smiling, he changed into his training gear and carefully slid into the red and gold Kung Fu jacket Pepper had given him.

\-------------

Despite his offer, Nick had opted not to borrow any proper clothing, and had simply shrugged out of his leather coat and shed himself of a staggering number of guns and hidden knives. Having trained a lot with Kunai and Shuriken, Tony was very familiar with throwing knives, and he knew a lot about guns from his weapons manufacturing days, but he’d never considered carrying the amount that Nick seemed to. He’d always been far more comfortable with weaponless hand to hand and with staves and Bo-staffs anyway, so he doubted he would start now either. 

After laying out a few ground rules (no kicking Tony in the chest or covering his mouth and nose, and Nick’s eye-patch and neck had to be left well alone), they separated ten feet and turned to face one another. 

For a guy who spent far more time telling others what to do from an office than he did in the field, Nick was pretty damn good. Tony had had less of a challenge against professionals at competitions. When Tony told him as much, Nick had simply smirked and told him that the only people at S.H.I.E.L.D who could beat him in a fair fight were Romanoff, Coulson and another agent by the name of Melinda May.

Nick also admitted, slightly awed, that if Tony were back up to his peak fitness and wasn’t inhibited by the Arc Reactor, then Tony would wipe the floor with any one of them easily. 

Tony smirked back and told him that he was working on it.

Nick tauntingly replied that he obviously wasn’t working on it hard enough and that even Sitwell would hold his own against him right now.

Tony decided to make Nick regret saying that and promptly floored him and spent the next two minutes pinning him down while he begged for mercy between huffs of laughter. 

\-------------

Pepper came home while the two of them were still taunting one another and exchanging flurries of fast blows.

She’d never seen Tony sparring with anyone other than Happy before, steering clear of his bi-weekly training sessions and competitions so as to protect his identity. But her facial expression was telling Tony that she was regretting never going along anyway now. 

She was watching him with a mesmerised look comparable in intensity only to the first time Happy had brought her down to his gymnasium all those years ago. 

Tony got so caught up in sending her one of his own adoring looks, that he completely forgot about Nick and only managed to avoid ending up on his ass through years of trained instinct. Nick laughed at his clumsiness and suggested that they continue their match another day. 

Gathering up his coat and other paraphernalia, Nick clapped Tony once on the shoulder before sweeping at the door with his usual dramatic swoosh. 

\-------------

When he tried to hug her, Pepper declared him grossly sweaty and dragged him upstairs to shower. 

Tony didn’t complain, because these days, he didn’t have to shower alone. 

\-------------

Pleasantly worn out, he curled up on the couch in front of the TV in his pyjamas and an over-sized hoody while Pepper bumbled purposefully around in the kitchen. 

He realised he must have dozed off when he noticed a plate of cheese and bacon pasta bake was now balanced on his chest and his head had ended up in Pepper’s lap. 

Starving, he scarfed down the food while trying to mumble compliments and thank-yous. He was trying to think of the best way to show his appreciation, when Pepper spoke up herself. 

“Teach me martial arts. I know I always said no when you offered before, but with all this Ironman and S.H.I.E.L.D business, I don’t think my college self-defence classes are going to cut it anymore.”

A pleasant warm, tingly sensation suffused through his chest and he told her of course he would.

She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair until he dozed off again. 

\-------------

At some point Pepper woke him and dragged him to bed. 

He was comfortably lethargic though, so the memory is little more than a fuzzy warm blur of soft touches and gentle embraces.

\-------------

He spent the next week in a flurry of motion.

The majority of his time was spent at Stark Industries with Pepper, finalising the New York Stark Tower plans. Once that was done, they could push through the last of the planning permission setbacks, secure the land and get started on the actual building. Tony was quite looking forward to it, especially as Harvard University were planning on awarding both him and Pepper with honorary degrees in architecture for the designs.

The rest of his time, he spent at home, either in the ‘shop, working on the Mark VI upgrades and keeping up to date with S.H.I.E.L.D, or in his gymnasium, powering through his workouts. Coulson had called asking for his own sparring session after talking to Nick, and Tony was determined to be up to peak performance for it. 

Plus, when Pepper finally had the free time to start on her own martial arts training, Tony wanted to be able to give her the best coaching he could. To do that, he needed to be at the top of his own game.

\-------------

Rhodey drops by on the Thursday evening, worried about a tracking device that Air Force forced to have him installed in his Armour. When Tony had been rebuilding it after the Expo back in June, the two of them had decided to call the Mark II the War Machine armour. Rhodey deserved to have his own superhero name after all, and Silver-Ironman, as the press had been calling him, wasn’t going to cut it. When the Military had announced it officially, the public had taken to it with enthusiasm.

He finds and modifies the chip, allowing J.A.R.V.I.S to disable and reactivate it as Rhodey thinks is necessary. He tweaks a few more things, but being an MIT engineering graduate himself, Rhodey has been keeping on top of most of the minor repairs easily enough.

They finish up and spend the rest of the afternoon lazily watching baseball. Tony’s not a huge fan, but Rhodey loves pretty much all American sport, so he decides there are much worse ways to spend an afternoon with his best friend. 

\-------------

At some point during that week, Tony also notices that the last of Pepper’s possessions have migrated from the room she had claimed as her own, to his bedroom. Which he guesses means that it was now _their_ bedroom. 

Their bedroom. He likes the sound of that.

\-------------

At the end of that week, Pepper also comes up with a way to help with his germ OCD, which annoyingly, hasn’t disappeared along with the palladium. He’s made some progress, now being able to take things from Pepper without so much as a twinge, and he could eat anything homemade that she brought him, whether he’d seen it prepared or not. But he knew it wasn’t enough and every time he had to go out in public, he was more and more worried that someone was going to notice.

Thus, he was more than happy to try anything that might help.

It was a simple plan really, involving shunting all his issues into only the one outward expression. Not exactly a cure, but at least it would hopefully make everything considerably more manageable. 

Pepper was all for channelling everything into workshop cleanliness.

Tony argues that he’d always been reasonably clean and tidy down there anyway, that keeping one’s space organised is part of the self-awareness and clarity of mind training he’s been doing since he was eight years old. 

Pepper wasn’t buying it though, asking why his work desks were always so cluttered then?

Tony pulls out his best puppy-dog eyes and promises to make dinner.

Pepper agrees that not being handed things could indeed be passed off as a ‘rich boy eccentricity’. 

She still wants to go for the workshop option. 

He extends his dinner offer to a full week. 

She adds in three breakfasts in bed, a full body massage, and extra paperwork duties and suddenly they have a deal.

Then she grins mischievously at him and he realises she had been planning on doing what he wanted all along. And that he’s just been thoroughly played. 

Goddammit, Pepper is seriously sneaky. 

\-------------

Once the final land acquisition deals have gone through and the Tower plans have been approved, Pepper and Tony suddenly find themselves with a lot more free time on their hands. 

Tony starts teaching Pepper.

They start like he did, with early mornings and an abundance of mental exercises and push-ups.

Just like Tony, she never complains. 

Within a month, she’s the one dragging him out of bed on a morning and demanding they go for runs in the evening.

Tony couldn’t be prouder. 

\-------------

The building of the Tower is costing him and Pepper a small fortune, so Tony spends most of his days that month designing a brand new range of StarkPhones and some other household electronic equipment. They’re not exactly going broke, having kept the company afloat post-Afghanistan on intellicrop profits, microchip processor sales, and the Expo sponsoring, but he wouldn’t mind having the security of an extra money buffer anyway.

He’s made cell phones for the public before, but they were never his main focus so he’d never really bothered to make them particularly affordable before. Now, he makes a concerted effort to do just that. The end result is a flagship phone that will easily cost less than an iPhone and a lot of the top-level Androids, but runs nearly twice as fast, has twice the internal storage capacity, will have the best screen resolution on the market, and has an operating system that almost makes Tony weep with pride. 

When he shows the completed prototype to Pepper and explains the manufacturing costs, she laughs hysterically and suggests they hold a funeral for Apple.

Tony tells her that Microsoft already did that when they released the Windows Phone 7.

Pepper decides they should hold a funeral anyway, but include Windows Phones in the ceremony; that with a series of phones this good and so reasonably priced, there was good chance they could drive everyone but Android out of the market for good. 

Tony suddenly realises she might have a point, and that it might not all be good.

They spend five minutes worrying that they’ll cause some kind of stock market crash by potentially sending so many other companies into administration. Then they decide that it’ll be fine, that they’ll hold the market up themselves if they have to, and how could they possibly deprive the general public of something this well designed?

Pepper takes the designs before the board the following Monday and they hold a press release two days later.

When the profit estimates start rolling in, Tony spends a few hours in stunned silence and then immediately starts altering the designs so that they can release a tablet version too. 

\-------------

Nick drops by with another set of hard-copy-only reports and mission write-ups, most of them Tesseract related.

Once the more serious topics have been dealt with, Nick asks if Tony is planning on taking over the world through electronic monopolisation. He also adds that Coulson thinks that it’s a brilliant idea and would like dominion over the Himalayas when Tony gets round to divvying up the world for his most loyal minions please. 

Tony doesn’t really understand why Agent wants a mountain range of all places, but he tells Nick that Coulson can indeed have them when he gets that far. 

Nick lays his own claims on Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Tony informs him that Pepper’s a fan of New Zealand and that she’ll probably want it for herself. Nick hurriedly forfeits all rights to the country, deciding that he’d really rather keep his head. 

Tony laughs, also wisely being afraid of Pepper’s wrath, and the two of them trudge downstairs to continue their sparring match. 

\-------------

This time, it only takes Tony ten minutes to pin down Nick enough times for him to yield.

Tony silently thanks Pepper for all those extra workouts she’s had him doing.

\-------------

Nick leaves after another hour and six more defeats. 

On his way out the door, he asks Tony if, like he is with Pepper, he’ll teach him too. 

Surprised, Tony agrees.

He wonders if this means he can finally add Sensei to his ever growing list of Martial Arts achievements.

\-------------

Thinking about Nick and self-defence gets him thinking about S.H.I.E.L.D’s firewalls. He curses himself for a fool and immediately has J.A.R.V.I.S scanning their database looking for holes and weak points. When J.A.R.V.I.S finds a worryingly large number of them, he curses himself all over again, furious at himself for not thinking to upgrade them sooner. 

When he finishes patching them up late into the night, he realises Pepper has at some point come down and joined him. She’s currently curled up asleep on the couch in the corner, and he spends several minutes watching her sleep peacefully, a gentle smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Still ashamed that he hadn’t noticed her come into the workshop, he carefully scoops her up and carries her up to their room.

When she sleepily snuggles up against him, he reflects that having Pepper quite probably means that he’s the luckiest man in universe.

\-------------

Coulson shows up the next morning, just as he’s waving Pepper off to work for the day. 

They have some official business to discuss -some equipment designs that he wants Agent Anthony Edwards to come by HQ and look at and a set of requests for satellite coverage that Consultant Tony Stark can deal with- but they soon devolve into bantering about each other’s ‘terrible phone goodbyes’ and then Coulson is suggesting they settle the disagreement over who’s worse by heading downstairs and using their fists. 

Tony heartily agrees.

\-------------

Coulson is even more of a challenge than Nick.

He has a feeling that the seemingly unassuming agent is at least a fourth or fifth _dan_ in some of his chosen disciplines and Tony is hard pressed to block some of the moves that Coulson throws at him. But after several long minutes, he has the agent pinned down and immobile. 

Hauling him back to his feet, Tony congratulates him and starts offering him tips for improvement. He’s halfway through a description of a _Hane Makikomi_ Judo wrap-around throw, when Coulson cuts across him. 

“You’re a seventh _dan_ or higher in most of your disciplines right?” Tony only nods, not a fan of bragging about his accomplishments. “So, you’re more than capable of training others and improving their skills, even those who are already considered accomplished in the arts?”

And that’s how Tony finds himself Sensei to a third student.

\-------------

He spends the rest of August coaching Pepper through more and more strengthening and flexibility exercises, and she takes over a corner of his gymnasium with her own fitness equipment. Her favourite treadmill from the public gym upstairs migrates down (Happy must have helped while he wasn’t looking) and most of one of Tony’s weight sets somehow moves over there too. There’s a stack of heavy hard back books that they use for core-strength training leaning against the side of a rowing machine, and when he goes to put away a set of his own freshly laundered gym clothes in his changing room, he finds that Pepper’s have inexplicitly mixed in with the ones already hanging up. 

He knows that if this had happened only a few years back, he would probably have gotten annoyed that his careful organisation had been disrupted. As it is now, all he can do is smile and mix up their clothing even more so that they’re well and truly muddled together.

\-------------

At some point he catches himself fondly calling her his kōhai, and seeing as it’s actually fairly accurate and she doesn’t seem to mind at all, he carries right on doing it.

\-------------

August also involves Coulson and Nick stopping by at least twice a week for their own lessons. He’s not sure how either of them find all the spare time with how demanding their jobs are, nor how they get out to California so regularly, but they always show up, ready and willing, so Tony doesn’t question it too much. 

Sometimes they even show up at the same time, and then Tony has a whale of a time pitting them against each other and standing back and watching.

They also seem to not only enjoy it, but to actually be learning and improving, which Tony finds reassuring; his teaching methods must be ok if they’re doing so well. 

(He’s not a boastful idiot though, he knows a lot of it is the natural talent and hard work of the two, and it’s not all down to his teaching.)

When Coulson comes in one day, grinning and claiming that he managed to pin Romanoff down for over a minute and he swells with pride for the agent, he realises choosing to pass on his expertise to others is one of the most self-rewarding decisions he’s ever made. 

\-------------

At one point, when he’s at S.H.I.E.L.D HQ and masquerading as Agent Edwards, ginger hair dye, blue contacts and slight southern accent out in full force, Coulson asks him why he never uses his first name when he definitely knows it by now.

Tony claps him on the back and tells him that he does all the time; that his first name is Agent because he’s the most agenty-agent in the world of agents. 

_Phil_ rolls his eyes and calling each other Agent and Consultant becomes a sort of in-joke between them. 

\-------------

September passes much like August does, only with the added joy of watching the ground be cleared, and the foundations of Stark Tower be laid down over in New York. 

\-------------

September 28th

The Stark Industries StarkPhone ARC I and the StarkTab Mach I go on sale. They could have waited for the Christmas boosts December would bring, but with all the media attention they’d had, the profit estimates were already so high that they couldn’t see it making all that much of a difference. 

Besides, the factories were already producing thousands of the finished product, despite it only being a month and half since they’d announced the designs. And they had the lower budget StarkPhones that they could use the Holiday rush to cash in on.

When the first sales figures come in that night, predictably a lot of the other phone companies -including Apple and Windows- panic and start throwing lawyers at them left right and centre. SI’s legal department deal with them with ease, and by the end of the month, Tony has money absolutely rolling in.

If he hadn’t already been a billionaire, he would be now. 

\-------------

After the first week of sales has come to an end, Pepper and Tony celebrate the success by watching the sunset from the mansion’s roof with a glass of ridiculously expensive champagne each. Tony only takes a sip of his and immediately spits it back out, demanding Pepper tell him why people enjoy such awful tasting stuff. 

Pepper doesn’t really have an answer to that, but she happily drinks Tony’s for him. 

\-------------

Tony’s even happier when the following day, Coulson brings a S.H.I.E.L.D contract with him to his training session. 

They want Tony to modify his ARC I phone designs so that they can be used as ‘company phones’ by the entire organisation. And they’re willing to pay out a hell of a lot of money for them. A _hell of a lot_ of money. 

They only people happier than Tony about it, are the Stark Industries’ board members when they too, see the amount S.H.I.E.L.D is going to handover.

(Not that they know it’s S.H.I.E.L.D who want them, S.H.I.E.L.D being a secret organisation and all. But money is money to those guys, so they barely even twitch at Tony and Pepper’s vague ‘public service sector’ explanation.)

\-------------

October15th, 2010

Tony walks Pepper through her first punch and block routine. It’s only a simple Karate Kata, but he’s extremely proud of her when she masters it in only just over an hour regardless.

\-------------

At the end of the month, Rhodey reappears, excitedly chattering on about successful counter-terrorist missions in the Middle East.

Coulson, who’s standing around still in his sports clothes, makes a comment about him talking even more than Tony does.

Tony asks him which one of the two of them is an adrenaline junkie Air Force pilot.

Coulson claims that they’re both adrenaline junkie pilots which makes his point invalid. 

Rhodey, uncaring, carries right on talking over them both and steals a beer from Tony’s cooler.

\-------------

At the end of October Fury brings him the blueprints for the already half constructed Helicarrier. He knows about S.H.I.E.L.D’s flying ship obviously, having come across the designs and construction logs in the database for the first time months ago. 

But with his busy personal life, and the Tesseract and the Phase Two project needing more immediate attention, he hadn’t thought much about it really. 

Looking over the blueprints and now paying attention, he’s actually quite impressed by how advanced and professional the designs are. Especially as he hasn’t had a hand in them himself. He spots a few problems though, and thinking back to latest set of construction logs, he makes a series of amendments and promises to come look over the completed ship when construction is finished.

And then because he’s feeling generous, he gets J.A.R.V.I.S to send Nick the designs for some retroreflection panels he’s been working on.

More than satisfied, Fury rolls the blueprints back up and strides off downstairs, not even waiting for Tony.

\-------------

October passes into November and the first floors of Stark Tower start to build upwards. 

\-------------

Tony spends a few days as Edwards running round the Triskelion H.Q in DC with Coulson, helping train some new recruits in field tech-repairs. Coulson even briefly introduces him to Agent Barton, who nods politely and grins much more enthusiastically and then runs off to catch a flight out to Africa for an extended mission. 

\-------------

Rhodey stops by again, and the two of them replace a number of damaged external panels on the War Machine Armour. He also sprays the suit with his new De-Icer solution. It’s not as effective as gold-titanium alloy at altitude, but it’s considerably cheaper. Especially as Pepper has entered negotiations with both the NASA and Audi to sell it on to them. 

\-------------

He shrugs on his Edward Jarvis disguise and drags Happy with him to watch a major boxing contest in LA. He hasn’t spent much time with his old friend outside of boxing lessons recently, so they shout themselves hoarse from the spectator stands and then spend the evening at Happy’s favourite sports bar back in Malibu, shouting some more at one of the many TVs. 

All in all, it’s an enjoyable day out. 

\-------------

With December comes the release of the rest of the StarkPhone models. They’re not expecting them to sell as well as the ARC I, but there’s more than enough people wanting a budget phone for them to make a tidy profit with them too.

And because it’s the holidays and he already has more money than he knows what to do with, he uses the profit from the sales to give each and every one of his employees a sizeable Christmas bonus.

\-------------

If he thought last Christmas and New Year was good, it was nothing on this year’s. 

\-------------

On Christmas Day, Rhodey comes over, having been granted ten days leave. Happy barges into the main house with an actual _wheelbarrow_ full of presents. Unexpectedly, Fury also shows up, and even more surprisingly, Coulson trundles in behind him, grumbling about Barton still being in Africa.

And of course, he has Pepper.

Tony’s not only never had so many Christmas presents in his life, he’s also never had such thoughtful ones. 

He absolutely doesn’t tear up during his (demanded by Happy) dinner speech. Absolutely not.

\-------------

Somehow on Boxing Day, they’re all still there.

For the first time since losing Jarvis, he looks around thinks he has a family again.

\-------------

When they all reappear on New Year’s Eve, he does more than think; he _knows_ he has a family again.

\-------------

Between his now standard teaching sessions, he spends January and February, watching the progress in New York, working on the Mark VI and improving S.H.I.E.L.D’s firewalls further. He also skips out to Iran to help Rhodey out once, but he gets into so much trouble with the Air Force for it, Nick practically has to spring him from Military prison. Rhodey makes him promise not to come unless he’s called for after that. 

Tony grudgingly agrees and goes back to trawling through updates on Romanoff, Barton, Banner and the Phase Two project at home. 

\-------------

February also sees Barton return home, much to Coulson’s pleasure. Nick explained that the two are very good friends over Christmas, and seeing the drastic improvement in Agent’s mood confirms that for Tony.

There’s also a very interesting mission for Romanoff in Russia that Tony keeps a careful eye on, given that Ten Rings are known to be involved. Romanoff handles it fine, and the CCTV videos that S.H.I.E.L.D monitors and routinely erase of her in action, have him reassessing his opinion of her yet again and deciding to afford her more respect in the future. 

\-------------

In March he gets Coulson to mock him up a fake ID for Pepper and enters her into her first Karate Grading. Technically you’re supposed to do your belts one at a time, but she’s well past yellow, so he throws a bit of money round and gets her entered into a red belt grading. 

She passes with flying colours so he starts her training her in Judo and Aikido too. 

\-------------

April sees him grading Coulson himself and awarding the man a sixth _dan_ black belt in Jujitsu. 

Fury gets a third _dan_ in Wushu and a forth in Hapkido.

He even holds his own little award ceremony for the two of them, with Pepper, Rhodey and Happy all attending and cheering as he presents them both with their new belts.

\-------------

In May, Tony finally figures out how to create the synthetic skin he needs. It’s not exactly medical grade and has to be washed off and reapplied every 12 hours, but it’s robust and safe enough to suit his purposes.

He pads his reactor with his specialised inner-suit foam, sprays it over with his new skin and gets Pepper to test out it durability. 

When he asks her too, she happily punches and kicks him the chest a few times. It’s not exactly comfortable, but the sealant holds and it’s nowhere near as painfully as having the reactor exposed would be.

If he could find an alternative way to siphon off the excess heat generation, he’d start covering the reactor all the time. 

Alas, he’d likely cook his internal organs if he stopped letting the heat escape out of the front plate before then. But it’s still progress so he accepts the victory he has achieved and starts planning how he’s going to use it. 

\-------------

He sends the basic formula for the synthetic skin over to SI’s medical division. The party the small group of scientists throw is wild enough to make national news.

Though that might just be because the skin is a medical breakthrough.

Tony likes to think it was the party though.

\------------

The 8th of May is Pepper’s birthday. 

Tony has no idea what to get her. 

In the end he builds her here own collapsible Bo-staff. Despite his worry, she completely loves it and he has to spend the best part of two days doing nothing but teaching her ninjitsu basics.

He complains and whines a lot, but Pepper knows he doesn’t mean it.

\-------------

On his own birthday at the end of the month, Pepper gives him another one of her mysterious brown paper packages with a blue post-it note attached. There are two new Kung Fu jackets inside, a sky blue one with Edwards printed across the back and another in forest green and white for his Jarvis persona.

Tony resolves to get Pepper her own Kung Fu jacket made up. 

\-------------

June 23rd, 2011

Tony attends his first mixed Kung Fu competition since before Afghanistan. It’s in LA, and being so close to home, Pepper goes with him.

As has always been his habit, he enters under the name Edward Jarvis. With his new background supplied and ‘authenticated’ by S.H.I.E.L.D, the identity is a little more airtight than it was previously, so he doesn’t hold back nearly so much as he usually does. Normally, he’d settle for winning third or fourth place, but today he’s decided he’s in it to win it. 

The other competitors are good. Some of them are very good. Tony gets a good workout in the later rounds, but he breezes through most of them and makes the final with relative ease.

Pepper cheers him on from the side-lines and he knocks his final opponent out of the octagon easily in the first round. During the second round, the other man gets lucky and lands a solid kick to his upper chest right on top of the arc reactor, forcing Tony to yield until he can get his breath back.

Thankfully, the third round goes in Tony’s favour too, meaning that if he is successful in the fourth, he places first in the overall tournament. His opponent aims straight for his chest again, but Tony had predicted that happening and blocks the move easily. They parry back and forth for a good thirty seconds, but then Tony sees his chance and vaults upwards, hooking onto the guy’s left shoulder and flipping him over and off the edge of the raised stage. 

Pepper runs up as soon as the point is declared won, and wraps her arms around him. 

In the face of Pepper’s proud hugs, the trophy he also wins doesn’t actually hold much value. 

He tells Pepper that and she calls him a sappy moron. Doesn’t stop her from kissing him repeatedly, but she calls him one all the same. 

\-------------

With the success of the Kung Fu competition, he throws himself into a gymnastic competition too.

Despite the lack of physical threat to the Arc Reactor, he has to be a lot more careful than he was with the martial arts. Mainly because many amateur male gymnasts compete shirtless, so he has to be twice as vigilant with the synthetic skin to make sure it doesn’t get ripped or start running. He decides to get himself a new competition shirt for next time, but for now he’ll have to go as shirtless as the rest of them.

On the plus side, Pepper doesn’t complain about the view. 

With the added bonus of Pepper very obviously eying him up the entire time, he thoroughly enjoys himself, scooping up both a first prize in vault, and a second in the men’s parallel bars. He contemplates trying his hand at rings too, but the covering over the Arc is getting a little slimy as the heat from the reactor starts to melt it, so he calls it a day and disappears back into the changing room to renew it and change out of his compression clothing.

Once he’s back in the main hall, Anthony ‘Ant’ Edwards collects both his medals and sweeps his girl off her feet in front of a fairly large cheering crowd. 

\-------------

That night Pepper lets him know just how much she’d enjoyed the view. 

And how much she enjoys his fantastic flexibility and stamina.

\-------------

The rest of Summer and Fall pass in the same comfortable routine they’ve established. 

Fury’s and Coulson’s training tapers off a fair bit, with both of them being occupied with S.H.I.E.L.D business; the Helicarrier is nearly complete, and Fury can’t think of any way to stall the Phase Two prototype construction any longer. 

Tony’s actually glad for the extra time, as the Stark Tower construction is demanding more and more of his attention. He dissembles the large scale Arc Reactor that’s going to power the building, and has it carefully shipped from the California SI headquarters out to New York. He modifies the top ten floors to take advantage of the unexpectedly high strength allowance, adding an extra balcony and extending the suit launch deck out further. And he and Pepper team up and start trawling through endless interior design options for their penthouse suite and private gymnasium.

Seeing as Rhodey still won’t let him fly out to help out in the Middle East, Tony uses the suit to help the construction crews get the final few floors worth of steel beams installed and even manages to stop a few petty criminals from mugging an unfortunate young lady one night.

He goes to a couple more competitions, both in Martial Arts and in Gymnastics and wins a whole load more medals and trophies. Pepper grumbles at him for leaving them all lying around everywhere and a few days later, a glass fronted display case appears next to his belt locker in Malibu. A faux-grumbling Happy lets him know that it’s damn heavy and that he’s not moving it round again, not even if Pepper asks.

A handful of successful charity and fundraising events later and with the first year of StarkTech sales since the Arc I release ending with record profit highs, Tony decides he’s had a fairly good year since the palladium poisoning and the Expo disaster.

\-------------

On October 15th 2011, he presents Pepper with her own custom made black and copper coloured Kung Fu jacket. He chose the date in honour of her surviving an entire year under his tutelage. 

She laughs and throws her arms around him.

“Oh Tony, it’s you who’s survived having me as a student for an entire year!”

He thinks that notion is ridiculous and kisses her repeatedly to prove his point.

\-------------

In November Coulson drags him out to the Triskelion again.

He spends a week parading round as Edwards, teasing Barton, pranking junior agents, avoiding Maria Hill and occasionally doing some actual work.

He upgrades the entire building’s security system, plays around with the internal computer network, seals over some more Database firewall holes, and fiddles with the wiring under a holotable a couple of young tech-agents have been developing (he thinks they were called Fitz Simmons? He still has no idea if that’s one or both of them). 

Throughout the whole week, not a single agent suspects him to be anyone other than Agent Ant Edwards.

\-------------

December passes much like the rest of the year; with training, competitions, endless Database updates, Ironman upgrades, Rhodey kicking terrorist ass and Agent and Nick’s stream of sarcastic remarks. 

The only unusual occurrence is Nick shipping him out as Edwards to the New Mexico base where Selvig is studying the Tesseract. The glowing blue cube makes him nervous and Barton, who’s now been assigned to the same base, ribs him mercilessly for it. Selvig has everything well in hand though, so he does as he was asked and checks over the Phase Two prototypes, and skips on his merry way after staying only the one night. 

\-------------

Actually the whole Tesseract and Phase Two business has gotten him so agitated that when he does get back, he draws up plans for a Mark VII suit prototype.

 _Just in case…_ the quiet voice in the back of his mind whispers.

\-------------

Despite Coulson’s absence, Christmas and New Year are as good as last year’s. 

When Pepper asks Nick why Agent had declined their invite, the Director mutters something about a new cellist that leaves Tony baffled and Pepper with a knowing smirk. 

Damn, he hates secrets. 

\-------------

The only things notable about January 2012 are that the Tower’s construction is finally complete and there’s just the final wiring, painting and furnishing left to do, and that Banner moves across to India and settles in Kolkata. 

Oh, and he releases the StarkPhone Arc II and makes a whole load more cash.

\-------------

Feburary he spends most of -much to Pepper’s irritation- helping finish the Helicarrier.

By the 23rd, it’s ready for both its maiden voyage and its first flight. 

Tony’s on board for both. 

Nick beams like a proud parent throughout. 

Tony makes a series of pirate captain jokes, which later earn him several painful bruises in their now fortnightly training session. 

Totally worth it.

\-------------

With the Helicarrier cruising serenely around the globe, Tony throws all his attention into Stark Tower. 

Other than the obvious decorating decisions in need of making, there are masses of press conferences to attend, a handful of interviews to do, and a series of negotiations with the national energy grid people to handle.

By mid-April, all that’s left to do is, install J.A.R.V.I.S, connect up the new Arc Reactor and move in.

\-------------

23rd April, 2012

Nick and Pepper watch as he has a major panic attack.

They’ve found Captain America in the Artic.

Alive.

\-------------

He avoids anything and everything to do with S.H.I.E.L.D while he desperately tries to get his careening emotions under control. Nick, understanding his distress, lets him.

From a logical point of view, he knows his real problem is with Howard and the comparisons that he used to draw between the two of them, not with Steve Rogers himself. But emotions are not logical, and the choking resentment and borderline hatred he holds for the icon of his youth were not going to disappear just because said icon was suddenly back in the land of the living.

The only thing he hears from Coulson on the matter is an update stating that the Council, despite having previously declared the project terminated, have insisted Rogers be added to the list of Avengers Initiative candidates.

As the team’s leader.

Pepper holds him as he screams out tears of frustration.

\-------------

Eventually, with a lot of help from his dearest sweet Pepper, he gets his head back in order and gets back to adding the finishing touches to the Tower.

The two return to their daily training, and Tony catches up with all the S.H.I.E.L.D updates he’s missed.

He doesn’t touch the Database files on Rogers though.

\-------------

On May 5th, the Tower is as complete as it’s ever going to be. 

He dons the Mark VI suit and disconnects the tower from the city power grid.

Just like planned, the Arc Reactor takes over and the Tower lights up.

His and Pepper’s celebrations are cut short by Agent walking in with a classified file. 

He knows it’s serious when Coulson calls by his second name.

“Stark, Barton’s been compromised.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So not the Avengers movie like you were probably expecting, but I felt that the fact that are an entire two years between Ironman II and the Avengers couldn't be ignored. And I still can't remember what the second question from last chapter was about, but I have a feeling it was about Loki and Phil....
> 
> Credit for all the martial arts knowledge goes to Elmo and Google. I barely have a clue myself, so I hope it's not too incorrect! [Shuriken,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuriken) [Kunai,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunai) info on [Black Belt Grades,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_belt_%28martial_arts%29) a nice little video demonstration of a [Hane Makikomi Throw,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtkr4lcGcbA) and the meaning of the word [kōhai](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senpai_and_k%C5%8Dhai)
> 
> And as for the [iPhone funeral ](http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Holds+Mock+Funeral+for+iPhone+BlackBerry/article19600.htm) that Tony mentioned, that actually happened! technically, it occurred later in the year Tony brings it up, but it was too amusing not to include it.
> 
> AND FINALLY!!! (because I don't say it often enough)  
> So many Kudos and hits and bookmarks and stuffs :D  
> Yay! Thanks guys!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that warning I gave you at the top of chapter two? About the excessively long Author Notes? Erm? Brace Yourself?
> 
> So! Rumours of my demise are only mostly exaggerated! (in other news, I still hiss at sunlight...)  
> I really am sorry about the huge lack of updating.  
> I was mapping in Spain with Uni.  
> Then I was cramming all seven of my second year final exams into two weeks. (yes, you did read that right. my Uni is _evil_ )  
>  And then I was in south France. For Uni. Mapping. I have sunburn. and tick bites :'(
> 
> But in four days my summer holidays finally start, so updates should be more frequent from then. 
> 
> Hopefully?
> 
> Ha. yeah right.
> 
> Enjoy!

May 5th, 19:23 (UTC-05:00) New York, USA.

Agent shows up at the Tower just as he steps off of the suit disassembly platform. 

Unsure and nervous as to why the agent has shown up unannounced, he tries to joke about Phil’s name and rambles about consulting hours only being every other Thursday. Agent sends him a mildly desperate look and Tony shuts up immediately, realising that whatever it is, it must be serious.

“Stark. Barton’s been compromised.”

Definitely serious.

His nerves worsen. 

More so when Coulson elaborates. 

Well Tony had said that the Tesseract was bad news.

And now the P.E.G.A.S.U.S base in New Mexico is nothing but a smoking crater, and Barton and Selvig have been magically brainwashed and stolen away by an insane Asgardian God. 

Coulson says that Fury is unhappy with the situation.

Tony and Pepper are certain that that is a drastic understatement.

\-------------

Coulson passes him the latest Avengers files and the New Mexico data and recordings, and he pulls them up on the Penthouses’ hologram array. 

Pepper passes Coulson a glass of champagne.

The agent states that he really shouldn’t be drinking on the job.

Pepper raises an eyebrow at him and looks across to the screens Tony’s pushing round. 

Coulson downs the glass in a oner. 

\-------------

He’s been immersed in the information Agent brought him for perhaps quarter of an hour when Pepper suddenly appears at his side. 

“You’re gonna have to look at it eventually sweetheart.”

Tony knows she’s referring to the still-sealed file set in the top right hand corner. The one which he pushed aside fifteen minutes ago and has been studiously ignoring ever since. The one with the famous rings and star that make up the Captain America logo emblazoned on its front.

He winces and then sends her a pleading look.

Pepper looks entirely unamused.

She doubles the blow by asking him what kind of genius ignores relevant data just because he doesn’t like the content? 

He can’t think of a suitably witty answer for that, so he mentally flails and tries to hurriedly develop a secondary tactic. 

All he can come up with is distraction.

Weak and destined for failure he knows. But when faced with a Captain America file, a man’s gotta try right? Right!?

So he barrels on ahead, lets as much adoration pool in his eyes as he thinks he can get away with, and calls her a genius too. Pulls her gently against his chest and gestures grandly at the tower surrounding them. Taps once on her head and once above her heart and claims the whole tower idea was hers.

Pepper is still clearly decidedly unamused. 

It’s clear that she sees the distraction for exactly what it is, and tells him, somewhat wryly, that no, most of the inspiration came from the Arc Reactor imbedded in his chest.

Which coincidently Tony, is partially based off old Tesseract studies. Oh and, Captain America dealt with it a lot back in the day and maybe he should take a look at those files to find out how much. That would be a good idea, wouldn’t it?

Still unwilling to admit defeat, Tony pulls a face and tells her at least some of the Tower credit has to go to her.

He quickly jumps through some mental calculations, rattles through some statistics, and mutters something about twelve percent.

Then he immediately starts wincing and berating himself for not thinking before opening his mouth yet again. Because, _twelve percent_? Yeah, that probably sounded bad. 

(forgotten behind them, Coulson also winces and starts studiously inspecting the control panel for the air-con)

Tony hurriedly starts apologising, stating he was still mid calculation and the actual percent would be much higher. Much, much higher. It doesn’t sound nearly as convincing as he hoped it would. 

He laments that now he’s completely ruined the moment.

Pepper says that’s ok, because she was only having twelve percent of a moment anyway.

Yeah ok, he probably deserved that.

He promises to put her name on the side of the next Tower _and_ on the lease, takes a deep fortifying breath, and forces himself open the Captain’s files as an apology to her.

The images and videos join the others on the array, and he steps back to stare at everything laid out in front of him. For the first time, he thinks the Council might have been right to be terrified of what the Avengers Initiative might lead to. 

\-------------

Pepper leaves with Coulson for the Triskelion after that. 

He turns back to the screens.

He has a hell of a lot of work to do.

\-------------

He works through the night. 

He zips through each of the Avenger candidate’s profiles, cross referencing what he learns with what he already knew from the Database files. 

He examines the security footage from the P.E.G.A.S.U.S base and watches with sickened fascination as Barton and Selvig’s eyes cloud over an unnatural iridescent blue and they abandon all their previous loyalties without a blink. 

He flies through the last set of Tesseract readings before the building came down and gets J.A.R.V.I.S to start compiling journals and articles on Thermonuclear Astrophysics, mind working overtime as it contemplates cold fusion and the coulomb barrier and a thousand other things the Tesseract has suddenly called into question.

He replays over and over the appearance of Loki and listens repeatedly to the God’s monologue and thinks that there’s something seriously strange going on there.

He doesn’t know what, but something about the would-be-king and his declarations is off.

He just can’t for the life of him work out what. 

\-------------

He crashes exhausted face down on to the nearest sofa around 7am, head still swimming with theories and possibilities and physics.

J.A.R.V.I.S will let him know if anything changes.

In the meantime he needs to get as much rest in as possible. Because he just knows, whatever else Loki’s plan entails, something big is going to go down.

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S wakes him just after ten am.

Apparently Banner, Romanoff and Rogers have all made it to the Helicarrier.

More importantly, S.H.I.E.L.D has got an algorithm running that should find Loki. Providing he shows his face anywhere near a camera anyway. 

Tony remotely alters the algorithm, cranking its efficiency up a few more percent, and goes back to reading up on Thermodynamics. 

\-------------

It’s quarter to noon when J.A.R.V.I.S pings him another alert. The algorithm has found a seventy-nine percent facial recognition match for Loki.

He’s in Germany. 

And he’s not hiding at all.

Something fishy is definitely going on. 

\-------------

It’s 3911 miles from New York to Stuttgart.

The upgraded Mark VI can do a little over Mach II when he goes flat out, clocking in at just under 1630 miles per hour. Maybe that’s a little excessive, but after the Expo debacle he wanted to be able to get from A to B as fast as humanly possible. 

So factoring in the 6 hour time zone difference, the time he needed to prepare and suit up, and the slightly slower max speeds of the journey’s end and beginning, he should arrive in Stuttgart just after eight-thirty local time. 

Granted, spending two and half hours locked inside the suit while cruising at twice the speed of sound wouldn’t be the most comfortable of experiences, but it was that or risk Loki disappearing again. 

He hurriedly packed up a load of equipment for J.A.R.V.I.S to have shipped out to the Helicarrier and stepped out on to the suit assembly platform. 

\-------------

Tony loved the suit, he really did.

It was his pride and joy; his all-time favourite creation.

(After J.A.R.V.I.S and the bots anyway.)

But _man_ , had he underestimated how boring transatlantic flights in it were. 

He was definitely going to add some in-flight entertainment to the HUD for future trips.

Maybe some DVDs. Or eye-controlled Pac Man.

At least he had music. Better than nothing.

\-------------

May 6th, 20:37 (UTC+01:00) Stuttgart, Germany.

He leaves J.A.R.V.I.S to do the coordinating with German Air Control and sweeps down towards where the HUD is telling him the S.H.I.E.L.D Quinjet signal is originating from. A quick hack into the Quin’s system tells him that Romanoff is piloting and that the PA system is his to command.

He sticks on some AC/DC because Rogers is about to get his ass flattened by an angry Norse maybe-God and Shoot to Thrill will distract anyone with its loud awesomeness. Certainly works on Loki anyway. 

That, and he was admittedly more than a little bored and introducing new people to AC/DC was always good for boredom relief. 

And hey, if it annoyed Captain Spangles too? Bonus!

It’s not like he ever claimed to be an emotionally mature individual after all…

\-------------

Yeah okay, maybe he does have to work on his emotional maturity just a little still.

But how could you see tall, dark and crazy’s ludicrous head gear, and _not_ be reminded of a reindeer? Plus, ya know, all those prison and criminal connotations….

\-------------

“Mr Stark.”

“…..”

“……”

“Captain.”

Tony silently congratulates himself for the completely non-antagonistic way their introduction goes.

\-------------

He then not so silently congratulates himself on his single handed subdual of Loki as they herd him into the back of the Quinjet and strap him in.

Romanoff looks faintly disapproving. Rogers frowns once and then ignores him completely. 

Oh who needs emotional maturity anyway?

\-------------

May 6th, 21:56 (UTC+01:00) Somewhere over the Pyrenees, France.

Ok so maybe he regrets creating such a tense atmosphere just a little. 

The deafening silence that has reigned in the Quin’ for the last hour is more than a little awkward. 

He opens his mouth to ask Stars and Stripes about the new uniform. And immediately closes it.

Yup, just another three hours and fifteen to go. He shifts his helmet under his other arm and stifles yet another sigh.

It’s going to be another really long night. 

Joy.

\-------------

May 6th, 22:03 (UTC+00:00) Edge of the Serra da Estrela mountains, Portugal.

Eventually the silence is broken by Nick demanding a radio update from Romanoff. 

As soon as the Director signs off, Rogers finally attempts to talk to him. Points out that Rock of Ages gave up too easily of all things.

Tony’s pretty sure that that fact is blindingly obvious, but in an attempt to be civil, he avoids pointing that out. 

Well. Tries to anyway. The civil thing doesn’t last very long.

Oh god, he just called Captain America a capsicle. 

He’s seriously wondering why on Earth Nick would ever believe him to mature enough to basically be the second or third most responsible person in the entirety of thr S.H.I.E.L.D organisation at this point. Because he can’t even hold his tongue for thirty seconds around this guy. And he’s got an entire database of stuff he _cannot_ blurt out swirling round his head. 

He’s very tempted to shove the truth of his positon in S.H.I.E.L.D in Rogers face anyway -secrecy be damned- when the soldier very condescendingly asks when Fury even called him in in the first place. 

He’s saved from blurting out something he regrets by the very sudden and very loud crackle of lightening arcing overhead. 

And that’s when things get interesting. 

\------------- 

So now there’s a second angry Nordic legend in the Quinjet.

And Tony’s in a tangled pile of his own limbs halfway into the cockpit with his ears ringing inside his helmet.

And they’ve lost Loki.

And Rogers is _still_ being annoying twerp and stating the obvious.

Is it any wonder that he left without waiting for him? Really?

\-------------

It takes him and J.A.R.V.I.S all of a minute to locate the two gods on one of the nearby ridges.

It takes him only another 30 seconds to blast in their direction and well and truly knock blondie off his high horse.

Damn that feels good. 

(And _maybe_ he’s just taking his frustration with Rogers out on Thor, but the wannabe god had it coming too.)

\-------------

In deference to Thor’s ‘delicate sensibilities’ (the Asgardian prince really has a problem with perceived insults to his warrior-manliness, or whatever you call it), Tony later describes the short battle to Agent as nothing more than a ‘short scrap between friendly rivals’.

\-------------

Actually it was more like Thor throwing him round a bit and Tony completely pummelling him in return.

\-------------

No really, Thor stupidly charged his armour up to 400% capacity.

Yes, he used most of it in that initial blast but, he was _completely pummelling_ the god.

Strong and ancient and well trained, Thor may be. But capable of dealing with a completely armoured, super charged, flight capable, Earth-martial-arts expert, he was not. 

Of course, just as he’s really getting started, Captain Jealous has to butt in and ruin everyone’s fun.

\-------------

(Five and a half hours later when Tony mentions the Shakespeare in the Park comment to Agent, he gets one of those almost-smiles. 

Yeah, the few dints in the armour were totally worth it)

\-------------

It totally just adds credence to his case where Rogers’ intelligence levels are concerned when the Captain tells Thor to put the hammer down.

Seriously?

_Put the hammer down??!!_

Oh wow.

\-------------

Predictably, Loki hasn’t moved from his rock and is quite happy to quietly get back in the Quinjet. 

And if that isn’t confirmation that something dodgy is going on, then Tony will eat his own gym socks for breakfast. _Before_ they’ve been washed. 

\-------------

They finally catch up to the Helicarrier as it hovers over the Mid-North Atlantic at what Tony’s New York orientated body clock is telling him is around 8pm. While it’s actually just gone 10pm, if one goes by the on board clocks set to AST. And back in Germany where they just came from it’s now past 3am of the next day. And in Portugal where he and Thor hashed it out, it’s five past two.

So when you consider that to get to their current location, they had to travel back across time zones? Well that sort of means that they were going back in time. But they were crossing into a new time zone approximately every hour, so they were actually staying at the same time all the time. While in actual fact they were moving forward in time because that’s how time works? 

So travelling back in time while not moving in time and progressing forward in time?

Time zones make his brain hurt.

\-------------

Loki gets stowed inside the Hulk cage-glass-room-thingy (hence forth known as the Hulk Tank. Because that’s a catchy name).

Tony knows that Nick is secretly very smug about that. Because that means the Hulk can’t be placed in it. Which Nick had very adamantly told the Council during the Helicarrier’s construction would be a Very Bad Idea (capital letters and all) and would result in Very Bad Things happening. 

The Council of course, didn’t give a damn and made sure the cell was installed and operational anyway. 

But hey, now the Hulk can’t be placed in it. Because Loki’s in there and thus the Council has been foiled. Which means Nick is happy.

Only Nick can’t actually be happy because of the Council and Loki.

And this is making his brain hurt too.

\-------------

Instead, he goes looking for Pizza. It’s after 8pm after all. Or well actually, it’s after 10pm.

Yeah, no. Not going there again.

Pizza.

\-------------

Agent Ant Edwards has been in S.H.I.E.L.D cafeterias many a time. 

Tony Stark has not.

The food tastes just as awful no matter which persona he’s going by.

\-------------

In an attempt to find better food, he finds himself in Nick’s office, sprawled sideways and mostly hanging off of a small black leather sofa. Nick stares down at him, amusement glistening in his eye. They talk about Loki and the Tesseract and Banner and J.A.R.V.I.S. And meeting Rogers for the first time.

“So how’d it really go Tony?”

“Turns out, whenever Captain Cupcake is within fifty metres of me, my maturity levels regress to those of a raging hormonal teenager. Fun times.”

Nick tells him his maturity levels are always those of a raging hormonal teenager and drops a box of cereal bars and protein shakes on his chest. 

Tony makes a suitably indignant noise.

Nick shakes his head and tells Tony he’ll break his fingers if he damages or destroys anything in his office. 

Then he strides off in the direction of Loki’s cage, leaving Tony to his own devices.

Tony immediately takes a screwdriver to the back panel of Nick’s computer.

\-------------

Agent finds him less than five minutes later, lying on his back under Nick’s desk and cursing around the wire strippers he’s holding in his teeth. 

Coulson doesn’t comment but he does drop another box on Tony’s chest. 

This one contains a fresh set of clothes. And his toothbrush. And a bottle of shampoo. 

And here he was thinking it was only Pepper who would drop less-than-subtle hints about the time elapsed since he last showered. 

Sometimes he hates his friends. 

\-------------

He watches Nick confront Loki through the monitor in Nick’s bathroom.

_Let me know if real power wants a magazine or something!_

Ha! That one was going down as a classic. That and _Ant. Boot_.

Tony occasionally has these moments when he realises his godfather is kind of a badass…

\-------------

Once he’s rubbed his hair mostly dry and more or less got his tie-knot straight, he allows Agent to drag him to “meet” the rest of the team. 

In reality, the only person on the bridge he hasn’t actually met in one persona or another at this juncture is Dr Banner. 

Tony may be fan-boying a little by this point at the prospect of introducing himself to the bio-physicist.

Just a little.

Now if only Captain Tight Pants wasn’t gonna be there too.

\-------------

Ok, so maybe he wasn’t doing so well at keeping his promise to Agent. 

The one where he said he’d play nice with Rogers. 

But the guy was so easy to wind up! Every pirate joke he rolled out made his left eyelid visibly twitch!

(He doesn’t know why the bridge crew were acting so unimpressed. Not like they hadn’t heard it all before from Edwards. Or maybe it’s because they had heard it from Edwards and thus thought it unoriginal? Or- yeah, stop getting distracted Tony)

And the one-eyed turning comments. So, so easy to wind up! 

Phil was going to kill him later. Should probably go back to talking about iridium and stabilising agents. 

\-------------

Turns out, Banner is 100% worth the embarrassing fan-boying. 

Oh wow, this guy’s _brains._

\-------------

This time it’s Fury who saves him from saying or doing something monumentally stupid to Rogers.

Just the look on the Captain’s face when he uttered the words ‘enormous green rage monster’.

(ok, he’s a Banner fanboy alright?)

Rather sensibly he thinks, he double checks the probe allowing J.A.R.V.I.S to quietly access the bridge controls (as Nick had asked), and takes the first opportunity to gather up Banner and leave that presents itself. 

Walks away before he can give into the impulse to punch the guy. 

\-------------

(Two hours later, he’s still not over the ‘I understood that reference!’ moment. 

Honestly. Completely ridiculous.)

\-------------

He takes Banner to the lab he knows Nick will have stored his pre-shipped crates in.

The way Banner’s eyes bug out of his head when he starts unpacking leaves him with a warm, proud feeling inside. If Banner’s impressed with this, wait until he sees the labs back at the tower!

\-------------

Tony’s pretty sure they’re gonna be stuck there all night, so the first thing he does is change into considerably more comfortable clothes. 

(He only put the tie and a jacket on because that’s what Agent brought him ok? Not like he was trying to impress anyone. Nu-uh!)

\-------------

He’s just realised that he only got three hours sleep last night. And that he’s now gonna stay up all of this night too.

Oh well, _sleep is for the weak!_

\-------------

Ok, maybe in retrospect poking Banner with a pointy electric stick wasn’t his best ever plan.

But someone has to get the guy to realise that strutting is most definitely preferable to tip-toeing.

If Tony has to work on his self-confidence issues, then Banner has to too. 

Now if only weren’t for goddamn Rogers. _Again._

\-------------

Tony is well aware that his intense dislike ( _hatred…_ ) for the World War II soldier originated long before the two of them ever met, and that it’s mostly Howards fault that they were never going to get off to an easy start. But Rogers is not exactly helping himself either.

The guy’s just so- so-

_So naïve!_

It’s laughable, how he thinks everything is so straight forward. That all he has to do is capture the bad guy and follow orders.

After all, how could a super spy like Nicholas Fury ever have any secrets?

How could S.H.I.E.L.D and Tony and Fury ever be _one giant secret?_

More afraid than ever that he’s going to blow up completely at the 1940’s moron, he quietly steers Banner into doing most of the talking and steps back.

(Oh wow, this guy’s _brains._ Definitely deserving of a blueberry.) 

Rogers gets there eventually. With a few nudges in the right direction.

(With a lot of nudges in the right direction)

And Tony even manages to not be too insulting. For the most part. 

Jesus, why on Earth was Howard always so obsessed with this guy?

\-------------

With Spangles finally out of the way (and J.A.R.V.I.S silently watching his progress through the ship), Tony gets back to working on those confidence issues of Banners. 

Three sentences in, he supposes that maybe Pepper’s right. Maybe he is a bit like a blunt axe to the skull when it comes to emotions.

But hey, he tries right?

Somebody has to.

\-------------

The monitor displaying the security feed from Loki’s cell runs constantly in the background.

Tony can’t help but watch. Watch and wonder.

The god is far too calm. Far too relaxed.

What is he playing at?

\-------------

It takes Rogers three hours to find the holds where the Phase Two prototypes and their predecessors are being stored.

Three hours!

And that was with J.A.R.V.I.S subtly steering him in the right direction. 

\-------------

He’s flicking through the latest scans for the Tesseract-search algorithm when he finds a new text from Pepper on his cell.

The date stamp is from last night.

It simply reads: I love you x

He smiles a bit easier after that.

\-------------

May 7th, 04:37 (UTC-04:00), Atlantic Ocean South of Nova Scotia, Canada

Banner leaves to grab some fresh cups of coffee. Or probably tea in his case.

In his absence Nick sweeps in. He looks kinda pissed. Oh dear.

“What are you playing at kid! I thought we agreed to let J.A.R.V.I.S take over the bridge controls and the steering, not the whole goddamn boat!”

Apparently the entire bridge crew saw the ‘Virus Detected’ warnings pop up.

So maybe he was a _little_ overzealous with the hacking. 

Oops. 

\-------------

There’s a minute when Tony thinks the vein in Nick’s brow might actually burst.

It’s right about the same time that Tony admits that he manipulated Rogers into going hunting around in the bowels of the ship.

\-------------

Nick grips Tony’s shoulders tightly and drops his head on his shoulder.

“You gotta be more careful son! You blow your cover and the only way I’ll be rescuing you from the Council’s clutches is from beyond the grave! Stop letting Rogers get to you!”

Nick lets go as suddenly as he’d grabbed him and sweeps back out the door.

Tony stands and begs his hands to stop shaking.

And thinks he’s very glad that Nick is 5000% better at being family than Stane ever was. 

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S sends him two alerts just as Banner shuffles back into the lab. 

The sun is just rising and Rogers has just found his first case of old Hydra weapons.

Oh and Romanoff is about is about to take a turn with everyone’s least favourite crazy. 

Pulling over the relevant monitor, Tony hops up onto a work bench and pats the space beside him until Banner nervously sits down next to him. 

\-------------

And wow, Romanoff must have been really off her game while undercover at SI.

Because that? What she just did to Loki just there?

That was scarily good.

\-------------

Tony is still pondering over Agent Romanoff when Nick strides back in again. This time wondering how far the Tesseract search has gotten.

Good news there. It’s nearly 50% of the way through already.

(And Tony supposes he does kinda deserve the second, more public berating for the very obvious hacking)

\-------------

It’s Banner who sees the notification about Phase Two and interrupts to ask what it is.

And it’s Rogers who answers by barrelling into the room and slamming a piece of the delicate tech down onto a lab bench.

\-------------

Tony cringes at the bang and thanks a God he barely believes in that the gun wasn’t charged. His short jaunt out to New Mexico last December taught him that throwing the prototypes around wasn’t a particularly good idea. 

Nick was definitely right to be mad at Tony for goading Rogers into finding them. 

And to really drive home the stupidity of that particular idea of Tony’s, Banner was now drawing everyone’s attention to the digital blueprints lighting up one of the monitors.

\-------------

Tensions are strung a bit high from that point onwards. 

Romanoff and Thor arrive and proceed to antagonise Banner further. 

Nick tries futilely to calm everyone down and succeeds in accomplishing the opposite.

Somehow Rogers decides that it’s Thor’s fault that Phase Two exists. 

Thor disputes that and more accusations get thrown around.

_Because you-_

_He-_

_Why did you-_

_How is that-_

More and more voices become raised and angry and Tony stands silently in a corner and curses himself for his impulsive stupidity.

\-------------

When Banner’s hand starts reaching towards Loki’s staff and Nick has to ask him to step away?

That’s when Rogers finally rounds on Tony.

\-------------

“Big man in a suit of armour. Take that away what are you?”

Oh that really pushes all the wrong buttons. 

\-------------

Genius.

Billionaire.

Prodigy.

Philanthropist. Inventor. Survivor. 

Godson! Agent! Trusted member of-

Tony shuts his mouth with a snap.

Take away his ragged breathing and you probably could have heard a pin drop in the silence remaining. 

Nick slowly slides his hand down over his face.

\-------------

Oh god. 

Romanoff is blank facing him.

Nick is similarly unreadable.

Rogers looks a little horrified.

Banner and Thor just look confused.

Oh god.

\-------------

The silence stretches. 

Wait. Where did the buzzing in his head go?

(There was buzzing?)

\-------------

“Soooo…. Is anyone else finding it a little easier to breathe since the staff stopped glowing?”

Banner might have a point there. 

\-------------

“Yeah actually, my desire to punch Rogers in the face has gone down by at least 37% in the last twenty seconds.”

Possible antagonising by the glow stick of destiny aside, Tony apparently still has an overly smart mouth. 

Rogers rounds on him again immediately. 

\-------------

He can’t think for the buzzing in his head. 

\-------------

Banner picked up the staff?

It’s glowing again?

Why is it so bright?

\-------------

Put on the suit, let’s go a few rounds.

He isn’t afraid to hit a what?

\-------------

He can’t think for the buzzing in his head.

\-------------

Wait. Did Banner just say he put a gun in his mouth?

\-------------

_He can’t think for the buzz-_

Rogers is thrown hard against him by the explosion.

\-------------

“Put on the suit!”

\-------------

Things are not so much tense after that as frantic.

There’s a hole in the floor of the lab and Nick is waving at him desperately from across the other side of it. Yelling something about turbines and engines. And falling.

And oh god the turbines and engines.

And then he’s running after Rogers with Nick and Agent Hill hollering orders in his ear.

And then he’s sending Rogers off ahead and closing the Mark VI armour around him.

And then he’s running-hovering-flying out of the cargo bay with the Hulk’s roar echoing in his ears and through the ship.

\-------------

There are numbers and blueprints and electronics and physics racing through his mind.

Spinning wildly, ricocheting, rebounding.

He knows he’s panicking but he can’t think for the numbers! 

Why the hell couldn’t he just leave Rogers alone!?

(∂j_s)/∂t = (n_s e^2)/m E

He’s got to get the super conducting cooling system back online!

(∂j_s)/∂t = (n_s e^2)/m E

He’s got to get this system back online!

(∂j_s)/∂t = (n_s e^2)/m E

Tony hates it when the numbers won’t stop spinning round in his head.

\-------------

The comms are all still open.

Nick is on the bridge helping J.A.R.V.I.S deal with the navigation.

Agent is calmly organising weapons distribution.

Thor is running for the air hangers.

The deep rage of the Hulk echoes through Romanoff’s. 

The sensory input is enough to drag Tony back out of the depths of his mind.

He takes a deep breath.

Turns to Rogers and gets to work.

\-------------

Yes, yes it does run on ‘some form of electricity’ Rogers.

Oh well, Tony supposes it could always be worse.

\-------------

Huh, Rogers is surprisingly good at soldering and rewiring if you give him detailed enough instructions.

\-------------

Assess, cut, remove, repeat.

Gotta get this debris cleared faster.

\-------------

Was that the hulk ripping a jet apart?

\-------------

“Tony! Tony!”

“Little busy here Nick!”

“Tony! Engine one is down, we’re losing altitude and we’re still over New Hampshire!”

“Yeah, Noticed!”

He sets his hands on the rotor-blade and starts to push.

\-------------

“Stark?”

“….Yes Rogers?”

“Since when are you and the Director on a first name basis?”

Long story Rogers. Long, long story.

\-------------

Tony really doesn’t care if he’s busy, Rogers needs to pull that lever _now!_

\-------------

Rogers! Now!

\-------------

Uh oh.

\-------------

Well, he’s not just experienced death by giant meat grinder. Close, but he came through.

And yes, they’ve temporarily lost Thor and Banner, but the Helicarrier is still in the air. So there’s that.

And now he’s having a ‘oh god we nearly died’ giggling fit with Captain America.

Today is weird.

\-------------

Nick is telling him to get to the Hulk tank.

Tony swallows. Hard.

He knows that tone of voice.

Knows it means it’s something serious.

\-------------

Nick has to catch him when he nearly faints. 

Agent is-

Agent is-

Loki is a dead man.

\-------------

He can’t breathe.

Agent is-

Phil-

Oh god _Phil_.

\-------------

He rings Pepper to tell her.

To tell her that Agent is-

She’s not the only one who cries.

\-------------

When he can’t sit and look at the blood stain any longer, he stumbles blankly back to the bridge. 

He stands in the doorway and listens to Nick talk about believing in heroes. Rogers sits with his head in his hands. A set of blood stained trading cards are fanned out on the table. 

Agent is-

Tony turns on his heel and walks back out again. 

\-------------

He ends up sitting on the floor with Agent Romanoff, Barton an unconscious witness in the bed above them. 

He tells her that Agent was his baby sitter.

That Nick is an old family friend. 

It’s only the very edge of the truth, but what else can he say? He came too close to destroying everything he and Nick have worked for earlier. Maybe Loki’s staff can be blamed for his stupid outburst, but-

But now Phil is gone. And he’s got to patch up his mistakes before any more damage is done.

So he tells her that Agent was his baby sitter and that they were friends. 

It’s only the very edge of the truth, but it’s enough for Romanoff.

\-------------

Tony gets up and leaves when Barton starts to come round. 

He can see the look Romanoff wears when she looks at the archer and he knows it’s best to give them time alone.

\-------------

He wanders aimlessly around the ship.

His eyes meet with Nick’s only the once.

Their silent conversation conveys more than words ever could.

\-------------

He misses Pepper.

He wants to go home.

\-------------

The blood stain. 

He keeps coming back here. Doesn’t know why.

He hates it. But he keeps coming back to this room. To look at that stain.

He really, really wants to hold Pepper.

\-------------

Rogers finds him just as he’s contemplating blowing his cover even more and finding out whether the on-board gymnasium is still intact.

He wants to, wants to go lose himself in the training. But what good are gymnastics and martial arts if you can’t use them to protect the ones you love?

Phil is gone and he’ll never get to teach him again. Never get to award him another belt, never see the pride in his eyes when he masters another move. 

He wasn’t good enough to save Phil so he’s going to have to train harder, faster, long-

Rogers finds him staring at that stain and the thought that he couldn’t keep his promise to Phil just about kills Tony.

He _will_ keep it now though. He will learn to get along with the Captain.

Because that’s what Agent wanted. 

\-------------

Rogers asks him about Coulson, about his life. Tony tells him what he can. It’s… nice. The sharing.

It’s the first civil conversation they have. 

Maybe he can do this, be friends with Captain America.

Besides, it’s Howard that he’s angry at really. 

He thinks that maybe one day he can explain that, and that then Rogers might understand too.

\-------------

It’s something that Rogers says, something about the Tesseract and the staff and arguing, and it’s one of those moments where a light bulb just goes off in Tony’s head. 

Loki is making it personal. 

It wasn’t just a random opportunistic attack, a side effect of a necessary rescue effort. 

It was planned. Staged. Controlled. 

He was deliberately aiming to split them, to separate them into their less-strong-than-whole components. 

The staff, the arguments. Antagonising Romanoff, goading Tony with the ‘warm light for all mankind’ remarks into sending off Rogers. Trapping Thor in the Hulk Tank, releasing the Hulk with the explosion.

It’s all so personal.

(It’s also all so weirdly reminiscent of Spike’s plan in season four of Buffy) (Tony needs to stop watching so much TV with Pepper)

The entire point is to beat them down while everyone watches. A captive audience to their demise. It’s all about showmanship and hitting where it really hurts. He wants to completely cripple them while receiving flowers and parades and a monument built to the skies with his name-

And oh god, the bastard’s using his and Pepper’s brand new Tower, isn’t he?

Son of a Bitch.

\-------------

He sends Rogers to collect Romanoff and Barton.

Then he runs to the bridge to find Nick.

The Mark VI is a bit battered after its meet and greet with the underside of engine three after all.

He’s gonna need some supplies.

\-------------

He gets the suit flight capable. 

That’s about all that can be said for it though.

Guess he’ll just have to deal.

\-------------

Nick drags him into a quiet corner just as he and J.A.R.V.I.S are getting the HUD reloaded.

“Kid. Tony. Just- I can’t lose anyone else today, ya’ hear me? You got that ya’ punk? No-one else. Be. Careful.”

Tony hasn’t missed Jarvis so strongly in years.

\-------------

Rogers commandeers a Quinjet, Barton and Romanoff in tow.

Tony follows them out of the hanger, and prays the Mark VI will hold out long enough to make it to New York. 

And that Banner and Thor make it there too. 

\-------------

May 7th, 13:37 (UTC-05:00), New York, USA.

He gets to the Tower. Just. 

He needs to swop out for the Mark VII as soon as physically possible.

Just gotta deal with the Tesseract that’s stuck to his roof and Selvig first.

\-------------

Remember when he poked Banner with his little electric probe?

Remember what he said about that plan in retrospect?

Yeah, turns out shooting a repulsor blast at the Cube is a lot like that:

A terrible idea in retrospect.

\-------------

Plan B it is then.

What was plan B again?

\-------------

Sure Tony, just take off the armour and waltz up to the crazy wannabe-overlord and offer him a drink.

Yeah, his plan B totally sucks.

\-------------

“The Avengers. It’s what we call ourselves.”

Yes Loki, that’s it, go on laugh it up. Keep giving J.A.R.V.I.S the extra time he needs.

\-------------

“I have an Army.”

“We have a Hulk!”

Please dear god J.A.R.V.I.S, hurry up with the Mark VII!

He’s running out of ridiculous things to say!

\-------------

Oh shit! Oh Shit! Oh Shit!

Oh Shit?

Huh. Performance issues with the glow stick of destiny.

Oh wait no shut up Tony!

\-------------

Oh crap.

\-------------

He dodges the attempted choke hold.

Thirty-three years of hard-learned instincts won’t allow for any other option.

But now he’s got a spitting raving mad, _furious_ god after his head.

And he’s weaponless. 

And oh hella god, Loki is scarily strong. 

\-------------

He’s not so much fighting in self-defence as running for his life in small circles.

Loki is fast. 

Really goddamned fast.

At least when he did this with Thor he had the armour on.

\-------------

Loki’s staff shoots blue laser-blast-things. 

Jesus Christ someone come save him!

\------------

Duck.

Spin.

Grapple.

Ram.

Duck.

Dodge.

Disengage.

Roll. Block. Jab. Duck. Kick. Spin. Disengage.

Ow ow ow ow OW!

Duck, block, roll, kick, ah god! Mind the throat with that blade!

Disengage.

On the plus side, Loki’s looking very confused.

Twist, flip, dodge, turn, step, hit, roll, disengage.

Guess he wasn’t expecting a ‘mere mortal’ to be able to hold his own against a god. 

Especially not one called Tony Stark.

Roll, roll, roll! Block, spin, elbow, wheel, turn. Disengage.

Well. Mostly hold his own.

Tony’s got a few scratches and bruises here and there. Just a few! (ish…)

And OW! There’s another one!

No! Not the goddamn throat you psychopath!

Shit, if he somehow miraculously survives this, Nick is gonna kill him. 

\-------------

Ah ha! Bo-staff acquired!

Well. Metal pole from the edge of the shattered table. Close enough.

\-------------

Or. Or not.

Just cut it in half why don’t you Loki!

At least he’s got two weapons now right?

Right!?

\-------------

No no no no no no!

Not the window! Not out the Window!

Aw- 

Aw shit.

\-------------

Oh bloody sodding hell, J.A.R.V.I.S deploy now!

\-------------

“J.A.R.V.I.S!”

\-------------

Tony would like to go on record to say that defenestration is really not fun.

And that glass cuts are not either. 

\-------------

Rhodey and Nick used to make jokes about him becoming a Tony-pancake.

That one day he’d fall out of the sky and go splat on a pavement.

A billionaire pancake. Worth more than the ground he’d be splattered on.

The joke just came way too close to becoming reality.

\-------------

Phil used to laugh at those jokes.

\-------------

The repulsor blast to Loki’s face is for Phil.

\-------------

Oh yeah portal.

Crap.

\-------------

Oh yeah army.

Double crap.

\-------------

The HUD goes fully red.

J.A.R.V.I.S loads up the battle menus.

And the explosions start.

\-------------

Romanoff and Co eventually show up.

They put the Quin’s arsenal to good use at any rate.

\-------------

He spots Thor going toe-to-toe with Loki on the balcony as he blasts past after another group of creepy blue bug-men.

Just Banner left to show then.

\-------------

Tony can see the Quinjet going down in the distance, Barton yelling through the comms that he’s got it, it’s fine!

And then there’s yet more Chitauri pouring through the portal. Only they’re just a tiny wee bit bigger.

( _Oh my god, they’re friggin’ space whales!)_

Um. Not good.

Didn’t he say earlier that today was weird?

\-------------

“Hey has anyone seen Banner? Has he shown up yet?”

“Banner?”

“Yeah, and um. Anyone else notice that Loki’s not actually doing any commanding? Or anything general like at all really?”

“….Stark?”

“Forget it. Just. Think on it guys.”

\-------------

Step One: get its attention.

What the hell was step two?

Because the big-ass space whale is big. 

And is now chasing him.

\-------------

Oh yay! Banner’s arrived!

Convenient step two coming right up!

\-------------

Hulk and Ironman: One

Evil Space Whale: Zero

Totally the best kind of party!

\-------------

Yay!

More evil space whales! 

Today just gets better and better.

\-------------

Tony and Rogers call out ideas and orders over one another.

Hawkeye up high, Thor bottleneck, Widow in the streets.

Only they’re not contradicting one-another.

They’re working together. 

And that? That’s nice too.

He just wants to make sure Phil would have been proud.

\-------------

Tony’s favourite part of this battle?

When Rogers winks at Tony, turns to the Hulk and says 

“Smash!”

\-------------

This working as a team thing is pretty cool.

Barton’s full of crazy useful ideas and has eyes like a –ha- a hawk. Romanoff can seemingly adapt to literally any situation. Rogers is, well, living up to the legend, Thor is, _well_ , also living up to the legend. Hulk needs no introduction, just plenty of things to break.

And Tony?

Tony’s being treated like his efforts and opinions matter.

And that’s awesome.

\-------------

The hell? Was that Romanoff?

Clinging to back of a Chitauri on one of those flying scooter things?!?

Zeus, his teammates are insane!

\-------------

Yup. That was definitely Romanoff.

Good Lord.

\-------------

Tony’s changed his mind.

His favourite part of this battle is discovering that he can bounce extended repulsor blasts off of Roger’s shield!

That’s so becoming a signature move.

\-------------

Hulk and Thor (and Ironman): One (Two?)

No wait-

Avengers: Two!

Evils Space Whales: Still Nil!

\-------------

Hawkeye and his exploding arrows: One

Loki’s overly smug face: Totally Nil!

\-------------

Tony tries to rack up another Space Whale point.

Lasers seem to be a no go.

And J.A.R.V.I.S is vetoing the Jonah idea.

So Jonah idea it is.

\-------------

Ow.

Ow.

That.

That hurt.

OW

Ok J.A.R.V.I.S, you win.

Jonah should so not be anyone’s role model.

Ever.

\-------------

Is that a Shawarma joint he nearly just got thrown into?

What the hell is Shawarma?

No Tony! Focus!

\-------------

He clicks off the comm to Nick.

It’s official.

The Council are the biggest bag of dicks ever.

\-------------

He’s got a minute.

A single fucking minute. 

Oh Christ

\-------------

The portal!

He can put it in the portal!

Save Midtown and-

He’s not coming back is he?

\-------------

“Nick? You still there?”

“Tony? What are you playing-”

“Look after her Nick. Look after Pepper. Promise me Nick.”

“Kid, you can come back and do it yourself!”

“Promise me Nick!”

\-------------

“Stark, you know that’s a one way trip?”

Rogers ain’t so bad really, is he Phil?

\-------------

Pick up Pepper.

Please Pick up Pepper.

Please!

\-------------

Pepper.

I’m sorry.

\-------------

May 7th, 15:03 (UTC-05:00), Beyond the Portal, Outer Space.

Tony Stark lets go of a Nuclear Missile.

And sees the stars before he dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ermm. lets use a list. I like lists.
> 
> 1) I have no Beta, and nobody proof read this. So please do go ahead and point out mistakes so I can correct them!  
> 2) I was reading back through the previous chapters, checking for continuity when I noticed Tony's swearing patterns. Specifically, that he says a fair bit of Britishy type things because I'm English and I tend to just spew out the first thing that comes to mind when writing. This was honestly a complete accident and I was going to try and Americanise them all a bit when I had a sudden-headcanon moment. Jarvis was British right? and in this fic he's the one the raised Tony? I don't see Jarvis as the type to swear and curse all that often, but Tony's bound to have picked up some of it yeah? (Opinions?)  
> 3) There's supposed to be copies of London's superconductor equations in the section where Tony and Steve are fixing Engine Three of the helicarrier. I don't know how A03 is going to deal with the format of them, so if they aren't there or look weird, Sorry! I'll try to sort them!  
> 4) Don't go to the French Pyrenees for over a month. You get tick bites. and sunburn.  
> 5) Yes, there is an Of Mages and Men chapter in progress too. (Sooooooon!)  
> 6) I did lots of maths to hopefully get all the time zones right. Then when I'd sorted everything I remembered that daylight saving hours are a thing that exist. Soooo. Daylight saving hours do not exist in this universe anymore. they're dumb anyway ;)
> 
> As usual, any and all feedback appreciated! Even if you want to group up and use the comments to plan my murder or something...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to ISpth's latest edition of 'in what way shall I make Tony over powered and scarily competent today?'
> 
> It's AU from here on out with random chunks of canon thrown in so wave good bye to familiarity!
> 
> According to Microsoft Word, there are 8,230 words in this chapter. hopefully that'll make up for the fact I went over my self-imposed deadline by nearly a week....  
> (sorry!)

May 7th, ??:?? (UTC N/A), Beyond the Portal, Outer Space

The call disconnects and Pepper never answers.

His comm cuts out. He can’t hear Nick holding back sobs now.

He lets go of the missile. Watches it glide silently towards the living metal nightmare suspended before him.

Watches it fly.

Collide.

Explode.

Like a supernova. 

Beautiful.

Space is beautiful.

A beautiful nightmare.

The call never connects and his comm sits silently next to his ear.

_Space is beautiful._

A beautiful, deadly, nightmare.

\-------------

The call never connects and his comm sits silently next to his ear.

There’s no oxygen in space.

The Mark VII is not designed for space.

He stutters in the last of the suits oxygen and closes his eyes.

Starts to fall and-

\-------------

Tony starts to fall and-

\-------------

Starts t-

\-------------

_Pepper_

\-------------

……

\-------------

 

……

\-------------

AGGGHHHHHHHHH HOLY SHIT!

\-------------

HolyshitwasthattheHulkwhatthehellis-

Oh god oh god oh god oh-

Huh. Not dead.

_Holy shit, not dead!_

\-------------

“We won.”

Oh thank god.

\-------------

“Let's just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma?”

Oh god his heart is about to pound right out of his ribcage.

He was just dead wasn’t he!?

“There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here.”

Flat out, stone cold _dead!_

Oh god, Pepper is gonna kill him!

“I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it.”

Oh god Tony, stop talking about shawarma!

\-------------

Forget Pepper’s murderous impulses.

He flew into a wormhole carrying a nuke. With the comm open.

OH GOD OH GOD NICK IS GONNA KILL HIM!

\-------------

Oh god! The Arc Reactor shut down and _he was dead!_

\-------------

Oh god Tony, _stop saying oh god!_

\-------------

Eventually, Thor and Steve help haul him to his feet. They have to support him for a few minutes until the blood stops rushing in his ears and the edges of the world go less grey. But he’s standing and capable of moving under his own steam.

He’s hoping the overlapping layers of sharp twinges and deep, dull throbs radiating out from the Arc Reactor in his chest start to fade off soon, or he’s not going to remain upright much longer. 

Pushing the pain into the back of his mind, he pulls off his helmet, because even before Thor yanked the faceplate off with brute force it was quite well dinged up, and now there are loose bits of metal sticking into his cheek. 

At least that’s one discomfort that he can deal with.

\-------------

Without his helmet on, the sudden absence of the crackling white-noise of his fried comm unit is very noticeable. He pulls the slightly charred remains out of its foam insulation and rolls it in the palm of his repulsor, suddenly very glad that it disconnected before he got to the point where he couldn’t breathe. 

Off to his left, Rogers frowns at him, obviously gearing up to ask if he’s okay yet again.

Tony smiles disarmingly at him, and the Captain snaps his mouth shut and turns to look up towards the shattered Tower instead.

Tony follows the path of his gaze, drops the broken comm back into his helmet.

Shudders in a deep, painful breath.

And takes the first jolting step up the street, Thor and Rogers falling into formation behind.  
   
\-------------

The small group gets fifty metres down the debris littered road before the Hulk snorts out a loud gust of air and begins to stomp noisily after them, dragging a bent piece of lamppost behind him.

\-------------

With the exception of the Hulk, they spend the walk mostly in silence.

Occasionally Rogers also breaks into it to mutter a few words over the comm; a short sharp order for everyone to meet in Tony’s battered and broken penthouse, and a handful of terse ‘yes sirs’ that must mean Nick is issuing his own commands. 

(There’s also, quietly, a ‘battered and bruised sir, but he’s on his feet’ that Tony avoids things about to closely; he’s is dreading the moment when someone gives him a functional replacement comm and has to speak to his godfather himself.)

Thor just lopes along quietly beside them, his hammer hung loosely from his wrist and his face grave. 

\-------------

Hawkeye greets them at the base of the tower, an arrow still nocked on his bow. 

He has a few glass cuts down his left side, and he’s walking a little stiffly, but other than that he seems relatively unscathed. 

Their eyes meet and they nod at one another.

They walk into the Lobby as a group of five.

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S has the service lift ready and waiting by the time they’ve navigated through the rubble and clambered to the back of the hall. 

It’s the biggest lift in the building, designed to hold large machinery and scientific equipment. Tony knows from experience that you can actually get a moderately sized car in it.

So theoretically a Hulk and four superheroes shouldn’t be too much a problem. A bit of a squeeze maybe, but they should all fit. 

Once Thor has corralled the Other Guy into the elevator though, Tony is one hundred and ten percent sure that the last thing he currently wants is to be trapped in a small confined space with a bunch of near-strangers pressed up against him for any length of time. 

Instead, he puts Rogers in the lift with Thor and the Hulk and babbles at them over their protests about catching the next one. Rogers objects vehemently and starts making motions to pull him and Barton in with them anyway, but thankfully J.A.R.V.I.S comes to his rescue before the Captain can do anything too drastic and shuts the doors and starts the lift upwards. 

Barton turns to Tony, his face clearly being kept carefully blank.

“You and the Director have so much explaining to do Tinman, it doesn’t even begin to border on funny.”

Tony swallows hard and very carefully doesn’t say anything.

\-------------

The ride up to the penthouse is tense and uncomfortable. 

He and Barton stand in opposite corners of the lift and eye each other warily, the silence dragging out.

Tony really hopes that Barton hasn’t connected him with Agent Edwards; the two agents are friends after all, but Tony’s given away too much over the last few days already.

Eventually Tony forces himself to say something, lest the fragile trust formed between the team members while defending New York disintegrates further. The same half-truth that satisfied Romanoff’s suspicions will hopefully content Barton too:

“Director Fury is an old family friend. He and my dad were close while I was growing up, so we know each other a little better than most people realise.”

Barton narrows his eyes, looks as if he’s going to comment-

Stops.

Nods.

And then visibly allows the tension to seep out of his frame.

Tony quietly allows himself a sigh of relief and lets his throbbing head drop back against the cool metal of the elevator. 

\-------------

They all have to switch to the private elevator once they reach the lowest floor of the personal levels. 

Rogers still doesn’t look impressed with Tony’s antics, but he wisely chooses not saying anything.

Tony puts him in the smaller elevator with Thor and Barton before the soldier can change his mind and speak up anyway. 

\-------------

“Well, just you and me then buddy.”

Tony very carefully pulls the Hulk into the cramped space, laughing despite the pain in his chest when the giant man has to rest his chin on his knees and practically hug Tony in order for them both to fit.

\-------------

Rogers, Thor and Barton are still stood by the elevator doors when Tony and the Hulk finally step out into the back of the penthouse suite. 

It’s even more wrecked than Tony remembers it being after his and Loki’s ‘sparring session’. 

Mostly on account of the two huge craters in the middle of the floor. 

One of which Loki is slowly dragging himself out of, groaning with every movement.

The group of Avengers exchange a round of glances and start move slowly towards the stairs.

\-------------

Romanoff swings down onto the balcony, Loki’s staff clutched in one hand just as the group has started to converge on the first crater. With another set of quick silent glances at each other, the group turns to skirt wide around Loki instead and meets her by the empty window frame.

They turn as one back towards the centre of the room.

\-------------

The wheezing Chaos God has just managed to crawl up onto the low stairs, quietly huffing with exertion. 

Barton pulls his bow taunt, the leather of his bracer rasping quietly. 

The barely-still-working mechanics of Tony’s suit whir faintly, sparking violently whenever the dented joints catch. 

Romanoff, Thor and Rogers grip their assorted weaponry a little tighter, knuckles almost audibly creaking.

The Hulk snorts quietly with every breath.

Loki pauses when he finally seems to notice their presence. Raises his head and turns slowly to look at them.

Barton pulls his nocked arrow back another half-inch back.

\-------------

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have that drink now.”

Tony can’t help it, he bursts out laughing.

\-------------

Tony saunters over to the battered remains of the bar while Barton and Thor see to securing Loki, using Mjolnir and several long reels of Romanoff’s S.H.I.E.L.D-issue paracord. 

Tony might have frowned at that if he hadn’t personally had a hand in the design of that cord, but he knew from personal experience that it would hold up even under the strain of an Ironman suit. 

So it should hold a God easily enough. 

\-------------

Loki raises an eyebrow when he realises the glass that Tony holds to his mouth doesn’t contain any alcohol, just strong iced-tea. 

He thankfully doesn’t comment though, not even when Tony winks at him. 

\-------------

When Rogers announces that it’s going to take the Helicarrier at least another ninety minutes to limp to New York, Tony loudly declares that the time should be spent following through with his shawarma plan. 

Barton and Romanoff look mildly confused. Or, well, as confused as two superspies who’ve just fought off an alien invasion could ever look anyway. 

Rogers sighs, failing to hold back a small smile, and tells them he’ll explain on the way. 

\-------------

Thor picks up Loki and literally drapes him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, much to the amusement of everyone except the God in question. 

(It’s even funnier when Thor turns around and Loki pulls a face, dramatically rolls his eyes and mouths ‘total idiot’ at Tony, gesturing at Thor with his head.)

\-------------

Tony grabs Bruce a fresh set of clothing and a pair of dark trainers from his closet on his way to the elevator, because the Hulk is looking bored and probably won’t stick around much longer.

And also because when Tony said he was keeping Bruce, he meant it. 

Because Bruce is _awesome!_

(Yes, yes, he knows. He’s a Banner fanboy, ok?)

\-------------

It’s a good job he did grab that black dress-shirt and pair of jeans, because ten seconds into the elevator ride back to the lobby, Hulk shifts back into an exhausted Bruce and his torn and frayed jeans most definitely no longer fit him. 

\-------------

Shawarma is….. different. 

Definitely different….

\-------------

“Yeah, errr, Lokes and I may have had a bit of a scrap in the penthouse just before the rest of you rocked up. But I’m fine! Really!”

None of the group looks the slightest bit reassured as he casually waves away the numerous cuts and bruises littering his body, many of them still bleeding sluggishly. 

Yes, the entire right side and the left shoulder of his t-shirt are soaked through with blood. And yes he’s missing most of one leg of his jeans, revealing more bruising and blood than unblemished skin. And maybe he should get a few dozen stiches down the gaping slice on his right forearm and put some ice on his abused neck and throat.

And probably wrap his broken ribs. 

And splint his ankle, which probably shouldn’t be twinging like that.

And do something about the fact his right knee really doesn’t want to bend anymore. 

And stop trying to move his right wrist which feels like someone poured molten iron over it. 

On second thoughts he really shouldn’t have taken the armour off outside the shawarma joint because even Romanoff looks about a third of a second away from entering extreme mother hen mode and Loki’s eyebrows are about to disappear into his hairline.

Tony self-consciously pulls the sleeves of his once-white long sleeved t-shirt over his hands and shuffles slowly into the building before anyone can suggest doing otherwise. 

\-------------

May 7th, ~17:15, Somewhere in Manhattan, New York.

No-one says anything (there’s a lot of worried looks, but no words) as they kick some of the shattered glass to the side of the room and drag a table and six chairs towards the open space next to the counter. 

Barton is the one who saunters up to the owners, bow still in hand, and asks for a portion of everything. 

Thor hauls Loki -who’s still trussed up with paracord- over to the far corner and drops Mjolnir in his lap. Loki looks distinctly unimpressed, but does little more than glower silently. 

Tony collapses painfully into a chair with a loud groan and decides that going out for food was a terrible idea. 

He could have stayed home and curled up in bed.

Terrible, terrible idea.

\-------------

By the time everyone has mostly given up picking over the unusual food, Tony’s bloodied shirts and Thor’s entire cloak have been sacrificed to make make-shift bandages. Most of which a now-topless Tony has ended up wrapped up in thanks to Romanoff and Bruce’s fussing over him -despite his grumbling and stream of Egyptian Mummy jokes.

Rogers has one arm clutched over his own vibrant red stomach bandage and is now practically asleep in his mostly empty food basket, saved from face planting it only by his own fist.

Bruce is still quietly putting bits of meat and salad in his mouth, and is watching both Tony and Rogers unsubtly from the corner of his eyes, his hand twitching occasionally towards the remains of the restaurant kitchen’s first-aid kit by his side.

Barton has one leg propped up on Romanoff’s chair and has taken to doodling on a sheet of grease proof paper, looking surprisingly injury free with most of the dust wiped off him and the glass cuts cleaned up. 

Romanoff said she was fine and everyone knew better than to argue with her. 

Thor seems entirely unaffected by everything that’s occurred over the last few days and takes another huge bite of Tony’s left over wrap, humming merrily to himself.

Loki asks for the sixth time if they’re just going to let him starve in the corner. Barton throws a wad of greasy napkins over his shoulder without looking and hits the god square on the nose. 

Tony smiles tiredly, crosses his arms across his chest and allows his eyes to slide closed. 

\-------------

He wakes briefly when Bruce and Thor lift him out of his chair and onto a stretcher, too tired to object as S.H.I.E.L.D. medics swarm like bees around him. 

Romanoff grasps his hand and squeezes once as they wheel him towards the door and Tony is left wondering once again how much the agent really knows and what the hell she was doing when she was undercover at Stark Industries.

\-------------

He’s aware of quiet beeping and a soft voice and a hand stroking gently over his hair. 

Of a hand clasped over his and a warm presence by his side.

Of a soft press of lips and a warm gust of air on his brow.

He smiles and leans silently into the comfort Pepper’s offering.

He doesn’t even manage to open his eyes before he drifts off again.

\-------------

“You and I are gonna have a long conversation about risks and acceptable losses when you get out of here son! A _real long_ conversation!”

Tony winces and looks towards where Pepper’s sat next to the hospital bed, pleading silently for help.

“And what the motherfucking hell were you thinking, taking on a _fucking god without your suit on! You’re not invincible kid!”_

Nick’s a little pissed with Tony now that he’s awake and stable enough for regular visitors.

_“You flew into a motherfucking wormhole carrying a live nuke, you dumb bastard!”_

He’s been yelling the same things at him with increasing volume and more and more swear words for the last twenty minutes now.

_“I don’t care if you saved the planet; Jarvis would have cursed my soul for all eternity if I ended up responsible for you dying that horrifically alone! What if the Hulk hadn’t caught your moronic ass!?”_

Pepper is apparently entirely unsympathetic. Not surprising seeing as she’s yelled the same sorts of things at him a few times herself.

Tony winces as the volume ratchets up another 100 decibels.

_“AND THEN YOU WENT FOR FUCKING SHAWARMA WITH A DAMAGED REACTOR AFTER NEARLY DYING OF FUCKING OXYGEN DEPRIVATION AND THEN FALLING SEVERAL HUNDRED FEET FROM GODDAMN OUTER SPACE WHILE BLEEDING OUT AND I FUCKING SWEAR TO EVERY GOD OUT THERE, YOU ARE NEVER LEAVING MY SIGHT AGAIN YOU IRRESPONSIBLE BRAT!”_

Tony can’t wait to get out of S.H.I.E.L.D Medical. It’s his first time here and he already hates it.

_“AND YOU OWE ME A NEW OFFICE COMPUTER FOR THE HELICARRIER YOU LITTLE SHIT!”_

No seriously, all the rumours about the awfulness of S.H.I.E.L.D medical are true.

All of them!

\-------------

Initially, the S.H.I.E.L.D airlift medic crew had taken him to the small New York headquarters in Manhattan, taking him first into surgery and then keeping him in the ICU there overnight and most of the next day until they were sure he was stable. 

Apparently he’d had some minor internal bleeding. And three bones that needed surgically pinning. Including a rib and most of his right wrist. And a worryingly large amount of blood loss from all the cuts he’d ignored until Bruce and Romanoff interceded. 

Oops.  
\-------------

May 9th, Triskelion, Washington D.C

Once he was patched up enough for further transport though, they stuck him back in a medical Quinjet and transferred him to D.C where they had better equipment and more space. 

On the bright side, Pepper came out to the capital with him and seems determined to stay with him no matter how incessantly Stark Industries and the media nag her for information and instructions and meetings. 

Unfortunately, D.C is also where Nick chews him out mercilessly.

Thank god the room is soundproofed!

\-------------

Nick insists that the other Avengers lay low and stay in the base until the worst of the media storm blows over, so Tony gets a steady stream of visitors. 

Banner, Thor and a slightly crazed looking Selvig bring him some blueprint outlines to look over; a glass Tesseract case, designed to get the two gods and the cube safely back to Asgard.

Rogers moans a lot about not being allowed to go help with the clean-up in New York and sneaks Tony lots of candy and contraband puddings. 

Barton helps with the pudding smuggling. And draws really bad cartoon doodles of Ironman punching Loki and of Coulson signing paperwork at his desk on his cast. 

_(Don’t think about it. Don’t think about-)_

Romanoff leans silently on the door frame and spins a knife through her fingers for hours at a time, glowering at every nurse and Doctor that shuffles past her nervously.

Nick brings him an ARC II Starkpad connected to J.A.R.V.I.S that’s showing the security feed of Loki’s current lodgings; a bright white windowless cell, Mjolnir ensuring that the Asgardian wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. 

Rhodey turns up in the war machine armour for a few hours, spends most of them yelling at him, and the rest loudly making plans with Nick to wrap Tony up in bubble wrap and keep him in a room with no sharp corners for the rest of his life. 

Happy hands him a cheeseburger and gets declared Tony’s favourite. 

But best of all, Pepper barely leaves the room at all. 

\-------------

Tony wishes Agent could come visit him too.

He turns the feed to Loki’s cell off before he does something stupid.

He knows exactly where that cell is and all the access codes to get in after all.

\-------------

He turns the cell-feed back on.

He can’t get over the nagging feeling that there’s a bigger picture involving the God that they can’t yet see.

\-------------

He’s in stuck in the small hospital room in the Triskelion HQ for another two days before the doctors let him sign out. They hand Pepper a set of crutches, several bottles of prescription painkillers and other medications, a long list of care instructions and force him into a wheelchair despite his (not entirely true) protestations that he can _walk perfectly fine thank you!_

But hey, he’s finally free from Medical, so he can’t complain that much really.

Jesus, he just wants to go home already.

\-------------

He doesn’t get to go home goddammit. 

\-------------

Barton appears out of nowhere just as they’re leaving Medical and he and Pepper wheel him to what he recognises as the officer’s dormitory wing. To the corridor Fury’s rooms are off. 

He sighs in resignation and allows himself to be pushed into the suite opposite the Director’s and tucked into one side of the double bed. 

\-------------

For a few hours, he wonders if his room assignment means that Nick has given up all pretence of secrecy at all. Then he finds out that the other Avengers have most of the other rooms on the corridor. And everyone seems to be just as oblivious as before, despite how much time the Director’s been spending with Tony.

Apparently they’ve all bought the ‘friend of my father’ line. 

Thank god.

He’s mostly convinced that his various secrets are safe. 

\-------------

Until Romanoff walks in while Pepper’s off elsewhere in the building shouting at board members over a video uplink, drops a badly made cheese and ham sandwich in his lap and tells him to “eat up Fury-junior, because I need some intel from the database”.

Tony chokes on his badly made cheese and ham sandwich. 

\-------------

Fuck fuck fuck!

Fuckedy Fuck fuck fuck!

\-------------

“Breathe dammit Stark!”

\-------------

Fucking Fuck!

Romanoff knows too much and Nick is going to rip him a new one.

_Again godammit!_

\-------------

Romanoff hits him on the back a few times until he starts more-or-less breathing again and croaks out to mind his still healing ribs. 

Then she asks him whether she ought to focus on mastering 7th _dan_ Ju-Jitsu, or get her 3rd _dan_ Jeet Kune Do out of the way first. 

Tony continues choking on his badly made cheese and ham sandwich.

\-------------

Once he’s mostly managed to stamp down on the wave of panic that makes his hands shake and his vision go wobbly around the edges, he carefully manoeuvres himself to the edge of the bed and hobbles slowly over to the room’s desk and lowers himself into the chair. 

Romanoff watches him silently from the foot of the bed.

Tony really wants to know how much she knows and how she found out.

\-------------

“Clint mentioned off hand that Agent Edwards and you look surprisingly similar. He clearly hasn’t worked out the connection himself and I don’t intend on enlightening him but I already had some pretty strong suspicions, and his comment convinced me to go do some exploring. So I did a bit of poking around in the archive room and well, it’s all obvious to me now.”

Well, that’s one question answered.

Tony’s going to suggest that Nick burns the archive room down. 

\-------------

He and Romanoff have a very long conversation following that, for a given definition of the word conversation.

Meaning that in actuality, Romanoff does most of the talking while Tony sits in stunned mostly-silence. 

\-------------

She reckons that his alter-ego is safe from discovery so long as he doesn’t let his southern accent slip and stays in character, given the depth and complexity of the invented background that Edwards has and Tony’s apparently impressive acting abilities. This she says however, is also dependent on him also fixing a few possibly fatal computer-based errors:

Worryingly, there is apparently a small hole in the firewall around his profile that let her get at information such as his level-nine security clearance and his responsibilities regarding the database. And that once she had a copy of his ID photo as Edwards from the archive room, it only took using a simple facial-recognition program to bring up both his ‘official’ S.H.I.E.L.D profile as Tony Stark/Ironman and a small sub-file on Edward Jarvis, gymnastics and martial-arts prodigy, and potential S.H.I.E.L.D recruit. Once all three photos were lined up next to each other, it would have been difficult not to see the connection.

Tony immediately grabs his phone and sets J.A.R.V.I.S on the two problems. 

Following that, Romanoff gives him a few tips on how to expand further on his ‘family friend’ explanation for his and Nick’s familiarity, so that the other Avengers are less likely to ever catch on. Mostly involving creating some embarrassing childhood stories for Nick to share and mocking up a photo or two to go with them. 

Tony nods tiredly and gets J.A.R.V.I.S to work on those two too.

She also promises to go shout Nick down and make sure he keeps his cool in front of other people in the future. His reaction to Tony grabbing the Nuke and steering it towards the wormhole was far too telling, too revealing to anyone who knew what to look for. 

Then to his complete surprise, Romanoff sits on the edge of the bed nearest to him and offers up a very sincere sounding apology for her lack of professionalism while she was undercover with him. Apparently she was under a lot of pressure as the Council were being excessively controlling regarding the whole operation, but she says that’s no excuse for her judgemental attitude and lack of concentration on her assignment.

Tony’s a bit gobsmacked and garbles out some form of acceptance and tries to offer up his own apology in return for being such an asshole. 

Romanoff cuts him off with a wave of her hand, stating that in his defence, he was a bit preoccupied with dying slowly and painfully at the time. And with pining over his hot red head ex-assistant. 

Tony lets out a strangled laugh and tells her she can use his first name from now on if she wants.

She smiles, and holds her hand out to shake, telling him that she will only if the favour is returned. 

They exchange promises to do some training with each other once Tony’s back on his feet and then Natasha slips out of the room as inaudibly as she’d arrived. 

\-------------

Pepper asks him what he’s grinning so much over when she returns not five minutes later. 

He pulls her gently against his side, shifting his right arm in its sling out of the way, and tells her he’s now best buddies with the Black Widow.

He gets to laugh at Pepper’s slightly astonished expression before launching into an explanation of the last half-hour. 

\-------------

Rogers and Barton show up later that evening laughing and joking, and wheel him off into the depths of Headquarters, Pepper striding along proudly by his side. 

His smile widens when Bruce and Natasha join them in the corridors and stretches even further when Thor also appears out of a lift. 

Everyone laughs when he quips that the Avengers have reassembled and are ready to face their next villain; para-military rations.

\-------------

Even later than evening, Tony swears he’s is never eating Cafeteria food ever again. 

By God, does it taste awful. 

\-------------

Nick is the last visitor of the day, knocking on his and Pepper’s door just as they’re starting to get ready for bed. 

Nick looks exhausted. 

Even more so when he pulls a pack of bloodied trading cards from his jacket pocket and drops them neatly on the desk. 

Tony closes his eyes and breathes through the pain of still too-raw memories and emotions.

“Divide them up amongst the team kiddo. Phil would have wanted you all to have them. Besides, I don’t deserve to keep them after I hand dipped them in the blood of the good man they belonged to for nothing more than an ultimately unnecessary motivational speech.”

Tony nods carefully in acknowledgement, eyes still fixed on the stack of cards. 

Pepper hands a trembling Nick a tumbler of whiskey.

They discuss funeral arrangements late into the night. 

\-------------

He lets go of the missile. Watches it glide silently towards the living metal nightmare suspended before him.

Watches it fly.

Collide.

Explode.

Like a supernova. 

You can’t breathe in space and the call never connects.

\-------------

Tony wakes up screaming.

\-------------

Thank God Pepper’s there. 

How did he ever live without her?

\-------------

When he finally gives up on sleep early the following morning, he’s pretty sure he would have been better off never going to bed in the first place. 

Pepper nuzzles sleepily into his side and he carefully runs a hand down the side of her face, unwilling to wake her again. 

He turns to the window and watches as the sun finishes cresting the D.C skyline instead.

\-------------

He takes the cards to breakfast with him.

Rogers sits and signs every last one before they share them out. 

\-------------

Pepper has to head back to New York to meet with the board and finish sorting some relief aid for the people of Manhattan who got caught up in the invasion. 

The minute he’s alone, Natasha and call-me-Clint Barton drag him to a training room and spend the rest of the day putting him through hell.

Literal bloody sodding awful _painful_ hell.

\-------------

By the end of the week he really, really wants to castrate Clint and gouge Natasha’s eyeballs out. 

He knows the physical therapy is necessary and that they’re doing it for his own good, but _by god_ , he really wants to murder them both slowly!

\-------------

The week just passed joins his ‘worst week ever’ list underneath the group of entries that include Afghanistan. 

With Pepper away, he doesn’t sleep through a single night undisturbed.

He would very much like to avoid repeating the experience ever again please.

\-------------

May 18th, 10:12, Triskelion, Washington D.C.

With a lot of input from Tony, Bruce, Thor, Selvig and some Tech-Agents have managed to get the Tesseract transporter finished and theoretically functional. 

Despite his ribs still being tightly bound, his right leg being carefully encased in metal support bars and his ankle strapped into an unflattering grey plastic boot, Nick agrees to let Tony go back to New York with the other Avengers to see Thor, Loki and the Tesseract off. 

Tony woops excitedly and waltzes off dramatically as best he can with one leg immobilised and a crutch supporting most of his weight and a cast and sling on the other arm.

\-------------

May 18th, 15:01, Central Park, New York.

The Council don’t find out that the Tesseract and Loki are going back to Asgard with Thor until the team and co are already all pulling up at the square in Central Park. Predictably, they scream blue murder over that decision. 

Tony and Nick on the other hand, couldn’t be happier; no Tesseract means no more Phase II project. 

And no Loki means no more worrying about that elusive bigger picture and no long term prisoner containment in need of arranging. And no fear of potentially having to defend a war criminal from human experimentation either.

Alien experimentation? Asgardian experimentation?

Whatever. It’s a win-win either way. So Nick just keeps repeating that it wasn’t his call to make, do they really want to argue with a God over it?

The Council shut up eventually. 

\-------------

Taking the silver case from Tony, Selvig and Bruce load the cube into the Transporter Device and Thor hands one end to a cuffed and gagged Loki, clutching the other himself.

Clint and Natasha stand next to one another, Tony leaning heavily against Clint as Thor takes one last look around, nods at Rogers and twists his handle.

They disappear in a wave of blue energy and a rush of air. 

The remaining Avengers stand in silence as the last of the cyan mist fades away. 

\-------------

“Well then. Who wants to move into Stark Tower with Pepper and I? Free room and board!”

Tony can feel the rumble of Clint’s chuckles through his side as they all laugh at the way Rogers’ mouth drops open and his eyebrows shoot up.

\-------------

Pulling his composure back together quickly, Rogers strides up to Tony and clasps his free hand.

“Yeah okay boss.”

This time it’s Tony’s incredulous face that everyone laughs at.

\-------------

Tony has been making regular attempts to convince Bruce to stay state side for last week, but ultimately it’s ‘Tasha that stops him from running to the nearest border. 

Once she and Clint have helped Tony back into the passenger seat of their S.H.I.E.L.D car, she strides up to where the Doctor is standing nervously clutching his holdall and hooks her arm through his. 

Next thing Tony knows, Bruce is being bundled into the back of the car with Clint while ‘Tasha ‘innocently’ asks him if he’s going to leave her to look after Tony all by herself.

Bruce protests that she already has plenty of people to help her, gesturing to Clint as an example. But by that point ‘Tasha has already climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the car away from the square. 

By the time they pull into the parking basement of Stark Tower, the Doctor seems to have resigned himself to his fate. 

Tony grins and claps him on the shoulder.

\-------------

The penthouse and some of the rooms on the front side of the building are still unfit for habitation despite Pepper and J.A.R.V.I.S calling in contractors only three days after the Battle. 

Still, there are enough intact rooms in the top five floors to house all of them for the duration, if albeit in a rather spread out and disjointed arrangement. 

Tony leads them to his home cinema set up, sprawls on the biggest couch in the room and promptly nods off.

\-------------

Pepper comes home to find five superheroes flaked over her furniture and a dozen empty extra-large pizza boxes scattered on her floor.

They’re arguing over whether to watch Die Hard or Finding Nemo next.

‘Tasha upends a bowl of popcorn over Clint’s head and they immediately agree to put Skyfall on. 

Rolling her eyes, Pepper kicks off her heels and pulls her barely-conscious boyfriend’s head into her lap.

Tony smiles because he knows it’s still not the weirdest thing she’s caught him involved in. 

\-------------

Oh lords above, Tony has missed sleeping in his own bed.

Sort of his own bed.

They can’t get in their bedroom still, so he and Pepper are actually in a guest suite on the floor below the penthouse. But it’s in his tower and Pepper’s there and the mattress is a thousand times better than anything S.H.I.E.L.D issued could ever be and Pepper’s there and he only wakes once during the night. 

Also, Peppers there. 

\-------------

No, he’s not a love-struck sap Clint. 

Seriously Bird-Boy, drop it.

\-------------

Ok, _maybe_ he his.

On occasion.

Once or twice. Tops.

It’s perfectly justified anyway.

\-------------

He’s just finished defending his honour to the archer when Rogers stumbles bleary eyed into the kitchen. It’s the only one in the private levels that’s both intact and big enough to fit all of the team and Pepper in at once.

Tony’s sat on a bar stool next to the stove, stirring a pan of batter one handed while Bruce pours cocoa powder into it.

“Is _anything_ in the report on you accurate at all Stark? Or did the definitions of ‘volatile’ ‘self-centred’ and ‘doesn’t play well with others’ change in the last seventy years?”

‘Tasha interjects before he can answer himself, claiming that if it was the report that she wrote, then probably not. His birth date is correct. That’s about as much as she can verify. 

Rogers runs a hand through his hair and leans back against the pantry door.

Clint pats him on the shoulder consolingly and hands him an apple.

\-------------

Nick calls to demand the reason none of them came back to base last night. Tony cringes and realises he completely forgot to share his plans with anyone.

He tries apologising but Nick is still less than happy with him for the Nuke stunt so Tony’s getting his ear yelled off. 

‘Tasha rescues him by taking his phone out of his hand and saying the word ‘Bombay’ into it. Nick immediately shuts up and growls that they better not do it again before hanging up suddenly.

Tony has absolutely no idea what just happened.

\-------------

‘Tasha point blank refuses to tell him the story behind the word or its significance, no matter how many times he asks.

\-------------

Clint won’t share either.

Goddamn super-spies.

\-------------

The six of them fall into an easy routine over the next few weeks.

Tony wakes from a restless sleep entangled with Pepper.

Gets up, watches her go through her morning routine in their private gymnasium.

Helps Bruce cook the team breakfast. Snarks with Clint.

Goes with Pepper to her office and organises SI and charity work with her. Checks on the construction work around the tower.

Spends lunch with Rogers – who soon becomes Steve – and gives him lists of pop culture and new technology. Shows him how to work his new Arc II phone or buys him old Pokémon games for his Gameboy Colour.

Disappears with Bruce either into the labs or into Tony’s workshop. Works on dissecting and reconstructing recovered Chitauri technology. Incorporates what he learns into the designs of the Mark VIII Armour. 

Helps Bruce test tissue samples from the Chitauri and the Leviathans. Designs new armour and gear for his team. Wishes he had the use of his right arm so that he could actually start building and creating all his ideas.

Shares his turn cooking dinner on Thursdays with ‘Tasha. Or cheats and orders in. 

Let’s the two spies abuse him with physical therapy for a few hours before collapsing in front of the TV for the evening with the rest of the group.

Rings Nick and reads new database files with J.A.R.V.I.S while Pepper runs through her pre-bed Katas. 

Crawls into bed with Pepper and prepares to spend a long night dreaming of stars and bombs and breathing and dying.

\-------------

There are a few deviations from Tony’s new norm. 

The first occurs only three days into their newly minted cohabitation. 

The funeral and reading of the will of Agent Philip J. Coulson.  
   
\-------------

May 21st, Arlington National Cemetery, Washington D.C

Phil is buried with full Military honours.

Tony sits in the front row between Pepper and Audrey Nathan, the Portland cellist he’d never met before now; the rest of the team, Rhodey and hundreds of S.H.I.E.L.D personnel spread out around and behind them.

Pepper grips his hand hard the entire service. 

She’s not the only one who sheds tears.

\-------------

They all converge on the Triskelion’s Cafeteria that evening. 

Bruce -of all people- steals a stereo system from somewhere and he and Tony and Rhodey wire it into the rooms PA. 

Rhodey takes one of Tony’s credit cards and returns with Clint, Natasha and two dozen agents, each laden down with as much alcohol as they can carry.

Pepper and Happy wheel in a cart full of plastic cups.

Nick storms in and loudly declares that under no circumstances is a party to be held anywhere in the Triskelion and that he is absolutely not responsible for the fate of anyone ignoring that order. 

Then he throws Clint a beer, uncaps a bottle of vodka and yells at Bruce to ‘get some damn music on already!’ 

Tony, Steve and Bruce stand together in a corner and watch as everyone raises their bottles and drinks in memory of everyone’s favourite handler.

\-------------

“Don’t abstain on our account Tony. You shouldn’t have to miss out just because I can’t get drunk and Doctor Banner can’t drink period. We’ll keep each other company.”

Tony chuckles and tells them both that he hasn’t had an alcoholic drink since he was fourteen. 

Steve has to hurriedly put his bottle of microbrew down before he drops it in surprise. 

\-------------

The three of them stick together through the night, swopping stories and helping to carry wasted Agents to bed. 

Neither Bruce nor Steve ask any questions about Tony’s drinking habits. Tony’s embarrassingly grateful to both of them for it.

\-------------

When Nick eventually surfaces from his rooms the next day, bleary eyed and missing his leather jacket, he downs a pint of water and then orders the Avengers to get the hell out of his base.

Tony laughs loudly, ducks the clip round the ear and goes to collect his hung-over friends and teammates.

\-------------

The other interruption to his routine comes in the form of Steve saying the wrong thing one afternoon at one of Pepper’s publicity press conferences.

\-------------

June 25th, Rockefeller Centre, New York.

It’s only Steve and Tony on the panel that day, Natasha choosing to stay on the side-lines with Happy and Pepper. 

It’s a simple question really, that causes the uproar. 

‘Captain America, how much are you enjoying your position as leader of the Avengers?’

Steve, bless him, scrunches his face up in confusion and tells the reporter that Tony’s the leader, not him. 

And before Tony can salvage the situation, he proceeds to list off every reason he can think of to support that declaration. 

\-------------

“Tony pays for everything. He houses us, feeds us, provides our equipment, transport and weaponry. He’s the most travelled and most experienced of us, has the best tactical knowledge, knows how to handle our public image, protects our privacy, liaises with the government and military for us. He sorts our medical care, organises our charity work, sorts team exercises, provides us with space to train in and works the hardest of all of us to ensure we have good team cohesion. 

“If any of us have a question or a problem we go to Tony. Need something fixing? Ask Tony. Got a suggestion, combat related or otherwise? Take it to Tony. Want to go somewhere or meet someone? Tony’s your man. Someone needs to stay sober and alert at an Avengers event? Tony will do that. Argument between team members? Tony will sort it out. Hell, even if it’s something as simple as being an old-timey dumbass like me and managing to overwrite your saved game of Ocarina of Time on your N64, Tony’s the one who’ll fix it for you!

“He literally organises our entire lives, provides us with a stable, secure, welcoming home, makes sure we’re all safe and happy and he does all this without once complaining about having to shoulder the responsibility. Without Tony holding us all together, we would have all gone our separate ways weeks ago. So, as far as I’m concerned, allowing you all to continue with the misconception that I’m the team leader of the Avengers is most definitely doing Tony Stark a great disservice.”

Steve sits back with a dopey smile and affects an ‘ah shucks’ expression.

The crowd of reporters go completely wild.

\-------------

Tony isn’t sure whether or not to face palm or get up and hug Steve. 

He settles for sitting in his seat shell-shocked while Pepper and Natasha make strangled noises off to their side.

\-------------

Nick doesn’t yell at Tony over the phone. 

He doesn’t yell at Steve over one either.

No, he barges into the just-completed and newly-christened communal floor of the Tower and bursts their ear drums in person.

\-------------

When Nick eventually runs out of steam, Tony fetches Pepper and ‘Tasha and the four of them sit and explain the World Security Council to Steve. 

The Captain’s gone completely white before they reach the end of their description.

\-------------

Between them they sort out a plan of action.

While in reality Tony wants nothing to do with leading the Avengers and would be much happier following along behind the others, Steve said too much and spoke too passionately for them to try and redact the statement now, so they’re just going to have to roll with the punches and Tony’s just going to have to suck up and deal.

Absolute best case scenario, the public will accept that Tony and Steve are Co-Captains and the Council will allow the unofficial appointment to stand without too many concessions needing to be made. 

More likely though, Steve will now be seen as the second in command and the Council will go nuts. They all know that the Council doesn’t want Tony anywhere near the Avengers Initiative, let alone leading it; they’ve been kicking up enough of a fuss with Tony only listed as primary funder and a consultant to the team. 

They’re really going to blow their top now.

\-------------

Yup.

The Council pretty much has a collective mental breakdown.

\-------------

In an unexpected twist of fate, when the Council force Tony to publicly step down from his leadership role under serious threat of permanent military prison incarceration, the public outcry is so great that Tony ends up still in charge anyway.

Steve thinks it’s hilarious and takes to calling him Admiral Stark because apparently Captain America is secretly a sarcastic asshole.

\-------------

Clint and Bruce start changing the name on all his mail and email to Admiral Ironman.

Tony tells them all to pack it in, or he’ll evict the lot of them.

\-------------

When Nick gets involved and officially assigns Agent Edwards the rank of Admiral behind his back, Tony decides to do the sensible thing and hide in his gymnasium until his team of douchebags stop being mean.

He sits forlornly on one of his Horses and looks around at all the equipment he’s not allowed to use. 

He can’t wait to get this last sodding cast off his wrist in three weeks’ time and start training again. 

\-------------

They don’t stop being mean.

Not even when he lets them all into their brand new individually customised apartments for the first time and they throw a mini party in Clint’s as a celebration. 

He goes to sulk in his workshop instead. 

(Stupid Steve and his stupid nicknames)

\-------------

July 25th, ~~Stark~~ Avengers Tower, New York

Tony gingerly steps onto a spring board and bounces up and down a few times on his toes.

He’s been keeping up with his physical therapy, but he still feels stiff and has aches where there weren’t any before.

Pepper smiles at him encouragingly and he takes a deep breath. 

Bends his knees…

And twists up into a simple front flip. 

He wobbles on the landing.

But that’s ok, he can totally work with that. He runs over and hugs Pepper vigorously. 

\-------------

He grins like a loon all day.

He can’t stop whistling random songs, lets it merge slowly into all out singing, convinces J.A.R.V.I.S to play the backing tracks along with him. 

Dances around Steve in the art room, belting out Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven until he gets chased laughing and shrieking around the tower by the soldier armed with a paint brush. 

Waltzes Bruce around the kitchen to Hotel California until Clint interrupts to ask why he has blue paint all over his face. 

Drinks coffee and jigs up and down to November Rain until Pepper and Natasha gang up on him to steal his mug and trap him in an empty meeting room to decaffeinate and calm down.

Pulls out all the wiring out of the holographic projector in there while being serenaded by Nothing Else Matters, because he can make this projector awesome if he just swops this wire with that one and adds in this transformer unit.

Bounces gleefully back up to the common floor when Steve takes pity upon him and releases him early, Losing My Religion echoing up and down the elevator shaft.

Pivots and leaps towards the walk-in-fridge, crooning along to-

He stumbles back from Nick’s chest.

Nick grabs his forearms to stop him falling backwards, his eyes deadly-cold serious. 

J.A.R.V.I.S cuts the music immediately.

\-------------

“Get your Mark VIII suit, find Agent Romanoff and come with me. Now.”

\-------------

Once the three of them are shooting away from New York in a Quinjet, Nick hands him a classified briefing packet.

The first page details the life and death of Agent Philip J. Coulson.

The second has project T.A.H.I.T.I emblazoned across the top.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised last night:
> 
> Led Zepplin: [ Stairway to Heaven ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcL---4xQYAl)  
> Eagles: [ Hotel California](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrfhf1Gv4Tw)  
> Guns N’ Roses: [ November Rain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbUC-UaAxE)  
> Metallica: [ Nothing Else Matters ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj75Arhq5ho)  
> R.E.M: [ Losing My Religion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwtdhWltSIg)
> 
> I've scoured through it and fixed all of the errors and typos I could find, but as usual don't hesitate to point out any I've missed :)
> 
> Also, fair warning for next chapter:  
> I haven't seen season 2 of Agents of Shield yet. Soooooo.....


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello.
> 
> It's 3am. This has barely been proof read. It hasn't been what-ever-the-opposite-of-Brit-Picked-is. 
> 
> But my dissertation is finished, submitted, done with, complete and just generally vanquished!
> 
> Shout out to all those readers who for some reason still want to read this despite my non-existent update schedule! Particularly those of you who comment! (I like comments! As do my parents, who yes, do read my work because I am a strange 21 year old. So yes. Hello Parents!)

July 25th, Indiana, USA

Project T.A.H.I.T.I

Tony physically blanches as he reads through the briefing packet.

It’s-

It’s sickening. 

Forcing a person through that kind of agony. 

Beyond inhumane. 

And the council is condoning it.

Condoning it and hiding its existence from Fury and keeping off of the S.H.I.E.L.D databases. Hiding it from Tony.

Beside him, Natasha flips another page and audibly growls under her breath.

\-------------

There are profiles of previous ‘test subjects’ included in the folder. Descriptions of their screams, their begging, their pleas. Examples of the horrific self-harm that’s common after the procedure, complete with graphic pictures. 

Three entire pages of names.

Names of those who didn’t survive the process. _People who ‘re-terminated’ before completion…_

Names of those who committed suicide afterwards. _People who ‘re-terminated’ after completion…_

Three names at the end.

‘Successes’

Those singular three who have somehow survived and haven’t yet tried to re-end their life. 

Phil’s name sits amongst those three.

Tony hears Nick’s knuckles crack as he grips the Quinjet’s flight controls even harder.

\-------------

“When we have Phil safe. When we have him home. Afterwards. When… We need to…”

Tony trails off, but Nick and Natasha obviously follow his thought process anyway. It’s clear in their facial expressions and in the rigid, determined set of their bodies.

Afterwards, the Council will be dealt with. 

Permanently.

\-------------

Colorado, USA

Fury carefully drops the Quinjet down onto a small flat expanse of open grassland, the mountains of the Sawatch Range rising up around them. 

Above them, a small grey concrete bunker stands out as a cold juxtaposition to the warm hues of the metamorphic and igneous rocks of the landscape surrounding it. 

Tony feels a shiver run down his spine as he looks up, even as the comforting plates of the Mark VIII armour close protectively around him. 

Nick flicks on the Quin’s retro-reflection panels and the three of them step out into the cool mountain air. 

\-------------

They proceed on foot. Flying comes with too much risk of exposure.

Occasionally, Tony uses the suit to haul Nick and ‘Tasha over the craggier outcrops.

Other than that, they keep as low down and as quiet as possible. 

\-------------

There’s very little of the bunker visible on the surface. Just two large metal doors set back into the cliff face and the pockmarked cement-grey walls jutting out to either side. 

With a nod from Nick, Tony and J.A.R.V.I.S quickly set about identifying the external cameras around the entrance and remotely setting them to loop empty footage of the cleared expanse before the doors. A single quiet bleep emits from Tony’s comm and then Nick and Natasha are up from their crouch and dashing silently towards the lone keypad affixed to the door. 

\-------------

It only takes a moment for Tony to slip out from the armour and jog over to join the others at the door.

This is a mission of stealth and agile efficiency. 

As much as it pains him to admit it, the armour is not very good at ‘quiet and covert’. 

Besides, this way they have J.A.R.V.I.S out front as backup if needed. 

\-------------

Being out of the amour in this kind of situation is not nearly as nerve-wracking as he was anticipating.

He’s got knives up his sleeves and down his boots, a collapsible bo-staff strapped to his upper arm, two miniature repulsors wired to his Arc Reactor, a fully equipped double gun holster snug about his chest and shoulders and more bits of wiring and electronics stuffed into the pockets of his cargo trousers than he could probably find use for. 

He may be out of his armour, but he’s by no means helpless.

He can always fall back on martial arts and brute strength if necessary after all. 

\-------------

That being said the only bit of equipment he uses to hack the panel and get the doors open is the screwdriver he uses to pry the cover of the keypad off. 

Nick mutters ‘show off’ with a smirk before tightening his backpack another notch about his chest and darting forward into the hallway beyond. 

\-------------

The base is eerily quiet.

Disconcertingly so. 

The three of them dash from cover to cover, Tony disabling cameras and opening doors as they go. 

They neither see nor hear anybody.

Tony has a worrying sense of foreboding building. 

\-------------

They weave further and further back into the mountain, checking every room and side passage they come across. They find laboratories and bunk rooms and offices and bathrooms and storage cupboards. But they never find a single person. And not one clue as to Phil’s location.

Nick’s brow becomes more and more furrowed as they mark off yet another room as clear. 

\-------------

“Is that more dripping? I swear everything in this place-” 

Tony cuts off midsentence as Natasha’s elbow jams hard into the side of his ribs.

“What? It’s not like there’s anyone here to hear-”

He swallows the rest of his next sentence hurriedly.

Footsteps.

He can hear footsteps.

Footsteps and voices. 

\-------------

Two men.

Guards. A perimeter patrol.

Clad all in black. Armoured. Armed.

Nick and ‘Tasha nod silently to one another as they slide quietly into the corridor’s alcoves.

\-------------

One.

\-------------

Two.

\-------------

Thr-

The two men’s eyes roll back in their sockets.

Tony helps ‘Tahsa drag their unconscious bodies into a nearby boiler room while Nick relives them of their weaponry and the contents of their pockets.

\-------------

They encounter more and more patrols as they proceed slowly down through the underground complex. 

Twice they are nearly discovered.

Tony becomes quite efficient at rendering people out cold with a single blow. 

And at hiding the evidence after the fact.

\-------------

Things nearly go completely to hell he first time they pry a door open to find the room occupied by half a dozen lab coat adorned scientists. 

It’s incredibly stereotypical, and more than a little cliché Tony thinks, the way not a one of them looks up from their work stations when the door opens and the three of them peer through the opening.

Despite how hypocritical it makes him feel, Tony can’t help but laugh out loud at the thought. 

Which definitely _does_ get their attention.

\-------------

Natasha is still shooting him exasperated looks –thankfully ones laced with amusement- once they’ve corralled the protesting scientists into a kitchenette and made use of several dozen cable zip ties to secure them.

Nick calls him a motherfucking idiot and affectionately cuffs him round the back of head as they lock the door quietly behind them

\-------------

The corridors become busier and busier and they soon give up on subduing every person they meet along their way. 

They just pray no-one spots them as they duck between hiding places. 

\-------------

“Oh fuck.”

\-------------

Tony violently swallows back the nausea that threatens to overwhelm him.

Below them, the latest experiment screams himself hoarse. 

\-------------

“Fuck, how can they do that to someone?”

“Hell if I know kid.”

\-------------

It’s a table. A cold, steel, clinical table. 

Wires and tubes run across it and a skeletal metal implement is positioned at its head. 

The multitude of straps do nothing to hide the pale shivering skin of the young man arching up away from it. 

\-------------

Tony really wants to force his way into that room all guns blazing.

But there’s easily over 30 people scurrying around down there. Many of them armed.

They’ve got to find Phil first or the whole operation will be blown; they’ll never find him if the whole facility goes into lockdown.

Tony grits his teeth so hard as they slide away, he fears they may crack.

\-------------

Duck.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

_Move._

\-------------

The five guards stomp on past, completely oblivious to the three agents lying atop the water pipes above their heads. 

\-------------

Cells.

An endless corridor of cells.

Jackpot.

\-------------

The reinforced steel doors line the corridor.

There’s barely five foot between each one.

A small window with three thick metal bars is carved at eye height into everyone. 

Tony takes a deep breath and steps up to peer through the closet one.

\-------------

The first dozen are empty, containing nothing more than a narrow steel-framed cot and a mattress almost thinner than the ratty blanket thrown over it.

They haven’t even bothered painting the walls.

They’re just exposed grey breeze block.

At least that way the match the bare concrete floor he supposes. 

\-------------

The thirteenth though, the thirteenth has bile rising in his throat.

\-------------

There’s a man sprawled face down on the floor, limbs wrapped awkwardly around the legs of the cot.

Tony thinks his hair may once have blond.

Difficult to tell with the amount of blood and grime matted into it.

\-------------

‘Tasha pulls a USB drive and port from her utility belt and wires it to the door’s keypad.

When the door swings outwards, Nick darts in and places two fingers against the man’s neck. 

Nick shakes his head and Tony forcibly swallows a snarl of frustration.

There’s nothing else they can do. 

They move on. 

\-------------

Two more bodies.

They find two more bodies

The second is so badly battered and scratched up, Tony can’t help but think it’s a mercy the woman is no longer breathing. 

Natasha pries Nick’s fingers away from the palm of his hand. Blood runs down over his wrist from the crescent shaped cuts his nails have left.

\-------------

The end of the corridor.

The last cell. 

Nick is the one to peer through the door. 

\-------------

Nick is also the one to practically yank the keypad off the wall in his haste to get the door open. 

\-------------

Tony is the first one through the now open door.

\-------------

Agent Philip J. Coulson is lying on the narrow cot, back to the door with one arm dangling lifelessly before him, fingers brushing the floor.

He’s dressed only in a pale grey pair of shorts that barely reach his knees, the cot’s blanket rucked up uselessly beneath him. 

Under the grime coating him, Tony is pretty sure his skin is unhealthily pale. 

Tony is crouched down beside him in an instant. Nick drops to his knees beside him.

\-------------

Nick reaches a hand out towards Phil’s wrist

\-------------

Tony stops breathing.  
   
\-------------

The world stops spinning.

\-------------

Oh god, he can’t- not again- Phil can’t-

\-------------

Nick sighs in relief.

There’s a pulse.

Tony chokes back the hysterical laughter attempting to bubble out of his chest.

Phil’s _alive!_

\-------------

They move quickly after that, cleaning and wrapping the thankfully shallow scratches on Phil’s wrists, gently wiping the worst of the sweaty, dusty sludge from his face, and bundling him carefully in a far cleaner blanket from Nick’s pack. 

Phil doesn’t stir in the slightest at any point during their ministrations.

But he’s breathing.

Breathing and _blessedly alive._

\-------------

Following three seconds of silent communication, Tony takes the rucksack from Nick and Nick carefully lifts Agent into his arms. 

With a quick check of the hall cameras, they begin the winding journey back to the surface. 

\-------------

They take a lot more risks. They have to, with Phil unconscious in Nick’s arms. 

It is after all, a lot harder to scurry atop pipes or clamber under floor panels in a hurry with a group member who is unable to do this for themselves. Instead they dart into side-rooms a great deal more and pray that they’re unoccupied, and scurry behind corners and hope that element of surprise gives them an advantage when hand to hand becomes necessary.

So far they’ve been lucky. So far they haven’t had to deal with more than five men in one go and no alarms have been tripped. 

But they’re about to reach the experiment room again. And the number of people in that area will be far higher than in the rest of the facility.  
\-------------

The clinical steel table is empty, the room empty of staff and the lighting turned down low.

Tony has no idea whether that’s good or bad. 

\-------------

At least the screams have stopped.

They move on again.

\-------------

“Damn bugger blast!”

Tony fails to catch the large metal canister that Nick just knocked over before it clatters noisily over.

All three of them wince as the bang echoes repeatedly off into the distance.

\-------------

“HOSTILES ON LEVEL FOUR!”

“SECURITY PROTOCOLS IN EFFECT!”

“I REPEAT HOSTILES ON LEVEL FOUR!”

Aw crap.

\-------------

And they were so close to getting out Scott-free!

Goddammit!

\-------------

Tony pulls his visual head set on, now uncaring that its neon blue glow is rather conspicuous and loosens his bo-staff in its straps. Behind him, a short low whir of electricity tells him that Natasha has powered up her Widows bites. Nick slides between the two of them, carefully moving Phil into a fireman’s lift and using his free hand to palm a pistol. 

The alarms continue to blare deafeningly around the as they break into a run down the corridor.

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S feeds live CCTV footage straight to Tony’s HUD, a stream of security code flowing down the side of the images. As best he can while sprinting and constantly scanning his surroundings, he helps J.A.R.V.I.S batter down firewall after firewall; if they don’t get into the building’s system soon, they’re going to find themselves trapped by deadlocked doors. 

\-------------

Nick fires a shot over Tony’s shoulder.

A muffled cry of pain is punctuated by the sound of a body sliding to the floor.

They run on.

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S takes control of the security network just as the first wave of gun-toting guards come careening around the corner ahead.

Nick immediately dives sideways into an empty laboratory to protect Phil, bullets flying from his hand towards the black clad group. Two men fall gasping.

‘Tasha twists behind a wall of exposed piping, a small metal disk sliding across the floor away from her. It sparks and three more men find themselves writhing as electricity courses through their bodies.

Tony floors the two remaining men left standing with a short low powered repulsor blast each. The miniature hand repulsors don’t pack anywhere near the punch of their full sized suit counterparts, but a quick blow to the head easily makes up for their short-fall. 

The guardsmen don’t get a single shot off.

\-------------

Tony kicks disgustedly at one of the men’s dropped rifles. 

Modified Hammer tech. Tony could build better in his sleep.

Needless to say, he does bother picking one up. 

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S smugly informs Tony that he’s started sealing blast doors behind them. 

From the CCTV feeds, Tony can tell that that has cut their opponent’s numbers down by at least 70%. 

Bloody well done Jay.

\-------------

Aw hell.

70% cut off or not, there’s still thirty armed men headed straight for them.

And a further ten between them and the external door.

\-------------

Ah shit shit shit!

Bullets bad! Bullets bad!

No no no! stop shooting!

\-------------

Oh ok. Ta J.A.R.V.I.S!

\-------------

They had been coping.

Just.

Nick was understandably occupied with keeping Agent out of the line of fire, leaving Tony and Natasha to handle the oversized contingent of guards alone. They had ten down before they had even reached the group, and a further five down once they had.

Unfortunately, the other fifteen had had ample time by this point, to begin making use of their weaponry. 

Tony now had a long painful bullet graze across his chest just above the reactor and a bloody nose from an unfortunately well placed elbow. Nat was clearly doing her best to ignore at least two broken ribs and consequently struggling a little with Tony’s bow-staff.

They had been coping.

But only just.

\-------------

Then, much to everyone’s relief, J.A.R.V.I.S had come barrelling down the corridor piloting the Ironman Armour and disabled the rest of the assailants with startling efficiency. 

Tony’s now grinning like a mad man with pride. 

J.A.R.V.I.S is _awesome!_

\-------------

He leaves J.A.R.V.I.S in control of the suit because an extra body on their team in a fight can never be a bad thing.

\-------------

Tony takes down the last three men standing between them and the exit with a shakily executed Butterfly Twist kick followed by a slightly steadier Handstand Sweep. 

Then the five of them are out the door into the fresh air and nearly home free.

\-------------

Nearly because, well, they’ve still got to get down the side of the mountain yet.

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S solves this problem too by scooping up Natasha and flying her down to the Quinjet. 

Tony really is proud of his A.I

\-------------

Within minutes, the ‘Quin has been re-landed on the open space outside of the underground complex.

Nick bundles Phil into the back just as Tony and J.A.R.V.I.S are finishing remotely dead-bolting the door behind them. 

As soon as they’ve gotten Phil settled and strapped onto the fold out bunk in the back of Quin’, Natasha has them up in the air and headed for home.

Mission more-or-less successful!

\-------------

July 26th, 01:31, Washington D.C, USA 

They head straight to the medical centre at Triskelion HQ.

Phil has yet to stir.

An entourage of medics meets them in the hanger bay and despite his protests, Tony finds himself pushed into a wheelchair, the bandaging across his chest checked and an ice-compress pushed against his nose.

As if he hadn’t already let Nick mother him and his injuries on the flight back. 

Besides, no one is pushing ‘Tasha round! And she has broken ribs!

\-------------

On second thoughts, there’s probably a reason no-one tries to order Nat around. 

Like a ‘touch me and I’ll break your arm’ reason. 

Right now Tony thinks it’s unfortunate that he doesn’t have a similar reputation. 

\-------------

Unsurprisingly, all the doctors do is re-check him for concussion (spoilers; no concussion!) and rebind his chest. Then thankfully, they let him go.

The first thing he does is ring Pepper.

\-------------

They spoke briefly on the flight while Nick cursed him and poured antiseptic on the bullet graze, but it was gone midnight and they were travelling and, well, it was brief. 

Just a “hey, we’re alive, we’re in one piece, we’ll be back in DC in thirty minutes, love you too, bye.”

Now however, he’s got to explain where they went and what they were doing.

He’s got to explain that Agent is not dead.

\-------------

“Hey honey it’s me again. No, I’m ok. Just a bit of a graze. Could you sit down for me love? No, it’s fine, good news I promise. Please? Yeah? Ok. So. Erm. There isn’t really a non-dramatic way to say this. See the reason we all ran off yesterday afternoon is because well Nick found out that- He found out….. Honey, Phil’s alive and he’s here in medical with me.”

\-------------

On the other end of the line Pepper is completely silent. Tony can’t even hear her breathing.

Not until she breaks into hysterical giggles anyway.

And then they’re laughing and crying together. 

Tears of joy because Phil’s alive.

\-------------

July 26th, 07:13, Washington D.C, USA 

Tony is dozing in a hard plastic chair next to Agent’s hospital bed, arms folded across his chest and head lolling sideways, when he senses a change in the room’s air pressure. 

He opens one eye and one Clint Barton is looming over him, his face only inches from Tony’s.

Tony understandably jumps three feet in the air with a very manly yelp while Clint cackles like a mad hat.

Tony is reminded why he hates his friends.

\-------------

Thankfully Cap, Bruce and Pepper have accompanied Clint and soon have the still chuckling archer calmed down and under control. 

A doctor then arrives bearing MRI scans and informs them Agent Coulson isn’t likely to awaken for at least another 48 hours. With little else to do, they pull up chairs from around the edges of the room and settle in to wait.

\-------------

Predictably, Pepper is soon fussing over Tony and his scrapes and bruises.

Tony graciously allows the fussing and smiles when she begins to exclaim over the slowly deepening blue-purple colour surrounding both his eyes and the bridge of his (thankfully unbroken) nose. 

He does however request that she stops poking said bruises because they’re sore as hell. 

She smiles apologetically, and Tony’s heart stutters in his chest.

Goddammit, he’s so in love it’s pathetic. 

\-------------

When Nick returns from where ever he vanished to with ‘Tasha an hour later to find the room over-crowded with sleepy superheroes, he wastes no time in banishing them all back to their own quarters with promises that they’ll be the first to know if Phil’s status changes. 

When they hesitate, he raises his right eyebrow and they all scurry out without another word. 

\-------------

Pepper has barely managed to pull his boots off for him before he’s snoring into his pillow. 

He’d be embarrassed about that, but he’s far too exhausted to care.

Far too exhausted and far too much in love with Pepper.

\-------------

July 29th, 13:13

Tony is going out of his mind. 

It’s been more than eighty hours since they pulled Phil out of the bunker. Three and a half days and the agent has yet to stir. 

Despite his thrice daily visits and everyone’s constant reassurances, Tony is sick with worry. 

Pepper headed back to New York yesterday, taking Natasha and Bruce with her. With Nick busy running S.H.I.E.L.D, Tony is left with precisely zero people with whom he could spar out his frustrations with. 

Steve has suggested hitting the gym more than a few times now that he’s cast and sling free for the first time since he Avengers moved into the tower, but Tony declines every time; he’s yet to work out how he’s going to hide his proficiency at both gymnastics and martial arts from those not already clued in. 

With how tightly strung he’s feeling right now, he knows that if he goes anywhere near a set of training mats he’ll snap and let the cat out of the bag. 

\-------------

Unfortunately for Tony, Clint is equally as stressed out. 

\-------------

It has been more than thirty years since eight year old Tony lay in a hospital bed and concocted his master plan with Jarvis. Since he decided no-one was kidnapping him ever again.

Jarvis agreed to the plan with one condition; that Tony committed to it, that he kept it up and gave it his best effort. 

Tony has yet to break that promise to his dad.

For the last thirty-four years, he has sweated and trained and cried and shouted with joy and given that promise his all. Gymnastics and martial arts may not have saved him from shrapnel to the chest and three months captivity, but they saved him from so many other incidents. 

After thirty-four years he likes to think he’s rather good at the two disciplines. 

Certainly better than Clint who has always focussed on archery and defensive-only hand to hand anyway.

\-------------

So you see, Tony is worried and stressed out and Pepper and Nat have gone back to New York and Nick is rather preoccupied with running the world’s largest security and intelligence agency. 

And Tony very seriously needs to work off some of this pent up energy.

So he waits.

He mooches around HQ quietly all day, waits until the early hours of the morning when the training rooms are empty and the base is deserted by all except the night shift personnel. 

When everyone sensible is long abed. 

When everyone sensible is asleep.

Which is precisely the problem;

Clint ‘Hawkeye’ Barton cannot be classified as sensible.

\-------------

See, Clint thinks it will be funny.

He strolls into one of the more moderately sized training rooms expecting it to be empty. 

Instead he finds Tony in the process of wrapping his wrists in boxing tape, dressed in worn looking MMA boots, loose knee-length shorts and a black skin-tight sleeveless tee.

He thinks it will be funny to work some of his frustration out with Tony. On Tony. Tony whom he knows is a passable boxer and a reasonable long distance runner, but isn’t so great at self-defence. Tony, who has spent the last three days dealing with his own stress by handing out snippy comments and generally being sarcastic.

Tony, who greets Clint’s amicable greeting with naught but a terse nod and then proceeds to ignore Clint and set about working through a series of stretches.

Clint isn’t having that. Clint has been ignored enough times already today.

Clint thinks it will be funny to challenge poor incompetent Tony to a best of three sparring session. Thinks it will be funny to leave Tony sprawled face down on the training mats. Thinks it will be funny to knock Tony down a few pegs and teach him not ignore Clint when he’s in a bad mood.

Unfortunately for Clint, Tony doesn’t agree so much with that.  
   
\-------------

Tony is so frustrated by this point that he throws reason out of the window and agrees to the sparring match.

He tells himself he can play dumb and let Clint ‘teach’ him a few things.

He tells himself he will not give the game away and will refrain from showing his hand.

\-------------

(Tony is kidding himself and is seriously going to regret this later)

\-------------

He insists on finishing his warm up first.

Clint huffs in obvious irritation and stomps off to run through his own routine. 

It only serves to rile up Tony further.

\-------------

Clint won’t stop making comments and scathingly offering suggestions.

Tony tells himself to breathe and count to ten.

\-------------

Clint! _Shut the fuck up!_

\-------------

Nope. Clint is getting his ass kicked. 

\-------------

Majorly seriously kicked.

\-------------

They stand facing each other. Clint drops into a basic defensive stance. Clint tells Tony to mirror him.

Tony dips his head slightly sideways and remains standing loosely upright, arms slack at his side. Tony keeps his face carefully blank

Clint waves his hands up and down a bit and makes some noise about “basic defence techniques” and “come on Tony, even the rookie agents can manage this bit!”

Tony tilts his head further.

\-------------

Clint declares that he will hit Tony regardless of whether or not he’s ready.

Tony’s eyebrows furrow slightly.

Clint insists that he’s “serious bro” and that he “will hit you”

Tony has to crush the urge to smirk.

\-------------

Clint jigs back and forth on the spot.

Tony’s head has tilted so far over, his ear is practically touching his shoulder.

Clint swears profusely and throws his hands up over his head.

He huffs in frustration, demands whichever gods are listening reward him for having the patience of a saint

And finally swings at Tony.

\-------------

Tony too, finally moves.

\-------------

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST TONY YOU THREW ME INTO THE WALL!”

\-------------

Tony is laughing so hard he can’t breathe. 

\-------------

 

“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU! WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT!?”

\-------------

Tony has never been one for kiss and tell, so he simply shrugs through his giggles and settles into his own preferred ready position. Clint eventually stops yelling and grumpily stomps back on to the mats. 

Tony tilts his head again.

\-------------

“Don’t start that again, you asshole. Keep your oversized head upright. I’m not gonna play around this time. I let you do that before.”

Tony grins unrepentantly at Clint’s accusing finger and tilts his head some more.

\-------------

Clint is understandably more cautious about his approach this time round.

He again makes the first move, but manages to block Tony’s repost.

Unfortunately, Tony was rather hoping he would do that.

\-------------

“Who are you and what have you done with Tony Stark? This is not cool man! You’re Admiral Asshole, not Sneaky Ninja McGee! Ninja-ing is mine and ‘Tasha’s thing!”

Tony has Clint pinned to the floor, arm twisted around his own throat and his knee bent around his opposite ankle. The archer can’t move an inch, but he’s making up for the immobility by grumbling non-stop.

Tony chuckles in lieu of an actual reply and releases the poor agent. 

Clint rolls over and flops onto his back, limbs flailing.

\-------------

To be fair to Clint, he did manage to hold Tony off for a good forty seconds before being grappled to the mats. 

That’s not bad going for someone who’s never faced Tony as an opponent before. 

Especially when you also take his previous collision with the wall into account. 

\-------------

“No really Tony, you have to show me how to do that thing you did with your elbow and the other thing where you twisted and did that thing that left me all twisted up. And that other other thing with the thingy-”

“Barton! Open your phone and look up synonyms for ‘thing’ yeah?”

“Fuck you Admiral Asshole!”

\-------------

Ok, so maybe not what he planned when he crawled out of bed at two am to go training, but he feels remarkably more calm now. And Clint is taking the whole ‘I’m also a secret agent like you’ explanation really well.

So win-win really.

\-------------

They don’t get much more training done once Tony starts to talk about his alternate personas. 

For a moment, Tony thought he was going to get away with not mentioning them or his involvement with S.H.I.E.L.D. Thought he could just tell Clint that he’s good at martial arts and leave it at that.

Then Clint cuts off mid-ramble to exclaim:

“Hey! You and Agent Edwards are the same person!”

And that idea goes out the window.

\-------------

Clint has a few questions (some of which Tony has the great pleasure of answering with a “that’s classified”), but for the most part he just shrugs and rolls with the punches.

His only complaint seems to be that Tony is technically his boss and superior both in the Avengers and with S.H.I.E.L.D. Even then he’s only joking around about how he can’t even pull rank when they’re here in the Triskelion now.

He finds the fact that Tony really is an Admiral hilarious. 

He also demands that Tony show him some gymnastics so they pull a horse, a spring board and a handful of crash mats out of the storage cupboard and Tony shows off a little.

Well he does his best to at any rate.

He’s still more than a little shaky due to his injuries following his misadventure with Loki during the Battle of New York, so he keeps it simple and tries not to be too concerned about his wobbly landings.

Clint seems to be impressed anyway though, so he calls than one a win too and sits back and watches Clint take a turn.

\-------------

Tony tends to forget that Clint was a circus rat long before he was a S.H.I.E.L.D agent. Whatever else may be said about carnies and their lifestyles, they’re damn good at nurturing acrobatic talent. Consequently, Clint ain’t half bad at tumbles and flips himself, even if it has been a number of years since he did any serious training.

Tony’s already mentally planning out two person routines. 

\-------------

The two of them call it quits and crawl into bed just before five am. 

For the first time in days, Tony falls asleep with a smile on his face.

\-------------

He wakes to J.A.R.V.I.S’s quiet baritone detailing the weather just before noon with a new sense of resolve. 

He jumps in the shower, throws some clean clothes on and goes looking for Nick.

It’s about time they made good on their promise to deal with the Council.

And Tony has an idea of how to go about it. 

\-------------

Nick is in the Helicarrier’s hanger bay, supervising the final repairs to the engine turbine. 

If you interpret supervising as yelling and cursing at workmen and agents as they try to do their jobs.

Nick is clearly as stressed out and worried as Tony felt yesterday.

While Tony can’t fix the root of the problem, he certainly intends to distract the Director from it. 

\-------------

Well. That _was_ the plan.

Somehow he’s ended up hanging upside down from the scaffolding around the turbine with a welding torch in his hands instead.

Not his fault that the guy who was working on this area before was doing it _wrong_ is it?

At least Nick is only shouting at him now instead of at everyone else. 

\-------------

By the time he’s finished repairing the man’s botch job and taken him to task for half-arsing it in the first place, Nick seems to have mellowed out and returned to his usual level of intimidating. 

Tony should probably have realised that his Godfather would find issuing verbal abuse cathartic.

Tony’s also starving now, having slept through breakfast and worked through lunch. So he drags Nick to the Canteen, loads them both up with food and steers them in the direction of the head offices.

\-------------

Nick is less impressed with Tony’s master plan that Tony was hoping.

Dammit!

\-------------

“What they hell do you think I’ve been doing the last half a week kid!? Skulking around and moping about like a sulky teenager like you and Barton? Give me some credit son, J.A.R.V.I.S and I have the motherfucking council half way dealt with already!”

Tony should probably be insulted by that, but he also likes to think that he’s mature enough to recognise when he has been acting like a miserable brat. And Nick’s right; that is exactly what he had been doing until last night. 

So he lets the teenager comment slide with only one or two sarcastic remarks in return.

He’s generous like that. 

\-------------

Joking aside, Nick and J.A.R.V.I.S have actually gotten quite far with dealing with the Council. 

Their plan is actually pretty similar to Tony’s own; blackmail.

See the thing with the council is, is that a lot of their power is sourced from their anonymity. Take that away from them and they lose their security. It’s a lot harder to issue global scale threats and ultimatums when people know that you’re just a nobody from back of beyond Ohio with a fifteen year old son who’s doing time in Juvie for grand theft auto. Those details humanise them and make them vulnerable.

To that end, J.A.R.V.I.S has been working pretty much none stop to uncover their identities; he’s got the names and address of five of the eight already. And ‘dirt’ such as the Juvie-son on four of those five. 

Tony’s not even grudging when he admits he’s impressed.

\-------------

With this being S.H.I.E.L.D’s main headquarters, Nick’s office is fairly large. Certainly big enough for an impromptu spar once they’ve shoved the couch against the window and moved the desk back a bit.

Tony’s rusty enough that Nick gets the better of him nearly half of all their short matches. Tony’s kinda proud that Nick has improved enough under his tutelage for that to be possible. They keep at it until they’re both an exhausted sweaty mess, and once Tony has made his usual evening call to Pepper and hauled himself up off the floor, he collapses in an uncoordinated pile of limbs onto the sofa. 

Nick jokingly says something uncomplimentary about youths and their lack of stamina and goes back to working at his desk. 

Tony snipes back with a predictable comment about refractory periods and flexibility.

Nick simply raises an eyebrow to that one, indicating the stiff, sprawled mess that Tony currently is. 

Tony silently admits defeat.

Nick snorts again and mutters “Yeah I thought as much” under his breath while Tony glowers at him. 

Tony silently vows to have his revenge.

\-------------

A couple of hours and at least two short naps later, Tony notices that Nick is packing up for the night. 

Huffing despondently, he begins trying to work up the will power to move. Nick shoves that last of his files and folders into his desk drawers, hefts his leather satchel over shoulder and ambles over to peer down at Tony. Who is still trying to motivate himself to move.

Nick shakes his head fondly, and instead of hauling Tony upright like he was expecting, pulls his legs straight, shoves a cushion under his head and throws a blanket from the back of the couch over him. 

Tony fails at keeping the surprise off of his face. 

Nick huffs another laugh, calls him a motherfucking muppet, and after sweeping the hair back from Tony’s forehead with the back of his hand, flips the lights off and strides out of the office with the usual dramatic swish of his leather coat. 

Tony falls asleep torn between gratitude to his godfather and an almost painful longing for Jarvis in his heart. 

\-------------

July 30th, 07:28

He comes round in the morning to the smell of bacon pancakes. 

There’s even maple syrup!

Brilliant!

\-------------

Unfortunately, Nick kicks him out as soon as they’ve done eating, grumbling about some or the other meeting. 

Tony will no doubt hear about it later anyway from J.A.R.V.I.S, so he instead goes in hunt of more food. 

\-------------

He fails at finding anything more edible than the usual canteen fair, so he gives up and instead goes to bug Clint. Given that the archer now knows that he’s also Agent Edwards, he figures there’s no harm in them going vent crawling and getting up to the usual shenanigans that agents Barton and Edwards are renowned for. 

\-------------

 

He finds both Clint and Steve in one of the rec rooms, playing table football of all things. 

Steve is trouncing Clint solidly much to the archer’s displeasure. Clint is therefore quite open to the suggestion of going exploring. Steve is intrigued enough to ask to come too.

Tony grins and sprints off to change into more suitable clothing. 

\-------------

The end result is that they get yelled at. 

A lot.

By the senior estates and maintenance agent.

Because Steve and his overly broad shoulders get stuck.

In an air vent. 

Steve was surprisingly good natured about the whole debacle, cracking self-depreciating jokes even after an hour of failed attempts to get him free. Eventually, having given up on screwdrivers and greasing _and_ hammers, Tony runs to the tech department and borrows a laser pen and carefully cuts away the metal to either side of Steve. 

The maintenance agent is even less impressed with this solution than he was when he found out what they’d been doing in the first place. 

So they spend their afternoon repairing the damage to the air vent.

Tony can only pray Nick doesn’t hear about it.

\-------------

Tony suspects the Tech department aren’t getting their laser back because the minute they’re done with the repairs, Steve pockets it in what he probably thinks is a surreptitious manner before practically running away with a hasty remark about evolving his Pokémon on time or some such nonsense. 

Clint looks faintly amused before shrugging and vanishing back into the vents.

Tony hesitates only a moment before diving in after him.

\-------------

(Tony can’t wait to tell Agent that he’s accidentally turned Captain America into a gaming addict, particularly with anything that’s handheld. The look on Phil’s face will undoubtedly be priceless!)

\-------------

Nick does of course find out. 

They get shouted at some more.

And then sent to their rooms like children.

Nick even gets J.A.R.V.I.S to lock them in ‘until they’ve thought about what they’ve done and learnt their lesson.’

Turncoat AI.

Tony is not amused.

He’s forty-two for fucks sake!

\-------------

After an hour or so Tony decides that they do kinda deserve to be treated like children. If Steve had gotten wedged into a less accessible vent or in a more dangerous area, it could have ended a lot more seriously. Taking Steve vent crawling probably wasn’t their most sensible idea ever.

He sighs, throws his clothes off, flops onto the bed and pulls up some blueprints on his phone; he’ll think of a way to apologise for his stupidity later. 

\-------------

He wakes to his mobile vibrating repeatedly against his face, the ringtone sounding rather shrill in the small room.

It’s Nick. 

There are texts too.

He doesn’t get further than noticing Phil’s name on the most recent of them before he’s barrelling out of bed, cursing down the phone at Nick because he can’t find a clean pair of pants.

\-------------

He ends up pulling on a pair of discarded gym shorts from earlier instead.

Doesn’t have time to find damn clean clothing when Agent _is finally awake!_

\-------------

He gets half way down the dormitory corridor before he realises he’s not wearing a shirt of any kind.

Or footwear.

Nick calls him every name under the sun across the open phone call as he curses himself blue and runs back to his room.

\-------------

He skids to a halt outside of Phil’s room at the same time Steve does. 

Their eyes meet, before Steve nods and allows Tony to proceed him into the room. 

\-------------

Phil is sitting propped upright against half a dozen pillows.

His eyes are half-lidded and he’s listing sideways badly against Nick who’s seated carefully on the side of the bed.

He smiles gently when Tony enters the room and Tony feels his knees weaken with relief.

“Took you long enough to come save my sorry ass Agent Stark. I hear you had to wait for the Director to discover my status and drag you out on a rescue mission rather than taking the initiative yourself. Not good enough Agent. How are you going to make it up to me?”

Tony laughs and allows his knees to give way and deposit him on the end of the bed, his face pushed against the sheet covering Agent’s shin.

Behind him, Tony can tell that Steve is wearing his Mark III confused face: major confusion, but Tony couldn’t give a damn a right now.

Because Phil’s finally awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Martial art moves videos and the Like:  
> [Butterfly Twist Kick](http://www.blackbeltwiki.com/butterfly-twist-kick)  
> [Handstand Sweep](http://www.blackbeltwiki.com/handstand-sweep)
> 
> MMA boots, because they look kinda cool  
> [MMA Boots](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=martial+arts+boots&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=643&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOs8bLmunKAhWKbRQKHeujAIMQ_AUIBygC#tbm=isch&q=mma+boots)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My exams are over, my degree is complete, I'm graduating in two weeks (with a first class Degree :'D *sobs with happiness*)
> 
> So here, HAVE A CHAPTER!

July 30th, 02:38, Triskelion HQ, Washington D.C

The nurses of S.H.I.E.L.D Medical only let them stay with Phil for thirty minutes before sternly declaring that the Agent needs his rest and kicking them all out.

The majority of those thirty minutes are spent listening to Nick grumbling good naturedly about all the stupid shit that various S.H.I.E.L.D agents have gotten up to in the last two and a half months, with occasional anecdotes interjected by Steve and Clint.

Tony stays sat on the end of Phil’s bed for the duration, content to let everyone’s words wash over him. 

\-------------

When they are ejected from the room, he follows Steve and Clint back towards their quarters. Once they reach their wing, they silently agree that attempting to go back to sleep would be a waste of time and effort, and instead slide quietly into an empty rec room.

Tony immediately folds bonelessly into a large plush armchair and drops his head down against the back. Steve sits more carefully on the opposite couch, Clint also collapsing into a sprawl next to him.

Steve then pins Tony with a look that can only be described as ‘pained curiosity’.

Tony mentally cringes and silently pleads forgiveness from his Dad for the fact he’s about to spill his secrets to yet _another_ person

\-------------

“Ok. So! Oh god, where do I begin? Right. Howard. Yeah, let’s start there. You are probably aware by this point that Howard was not particularly great at fatherhood? Well, as a combination of that and my unfortunately high levels of fame, I used to get kidnapped a lot. So I convinced Jarvis – the original Jarvis that is- that I ought to learn lots of martial arts and gymnastics while I was away at school and college. And because Jarvis sort of unofficially adopted me, and Nick Fury was one of Jarvis’ best friends, Nick sort of took on the positon of my badass scary Godfather. Oh, and I‘m actually am an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, not just a consultant. And I really am an Admiral too. Which, by the way, is totally your fault Steve, yours and your stupid jokes! Errr, that about covers it I think! Any questions?”

Steve opens and closes his mouth several times, before frowning, running his hand through his hair and slowly leaning back.

\-------------

Several long hours, two mugs of coffee, lots of questions, and the day’s first fingers of sunlight filtering through the window later, and Tony has more or less managed to convey a coherent version of his life story to Steve. 

He’s a bit disturbed to realise that the Captain is now watching him with what is quite possibly a little bit of hero worship in his eyes. 

That’s just all kinds of back to front.

Because it’s _Steve!_

Steve! Who is _Captain freaking America!_

And he’s just Tony. 

Yeah, just a little disturbing in all honesty. 

\-------------

It’s now 07:16 and Tony can feel himself dozing off where he sits.

After the third time he jolts himself back to alertness, he gives up denying how tired he is and drags himself slowly to his feet. 

Clint grins and calls him a sleepy kitten as he shuffles slowly towards the door, and coos at him and tries to ruffle his hair. Tony grumbles at him and bats his hands away, sending a pleading look towards Steve for backup. 

Steve, rather predictably, does nothing but chuckle at him and provides absolutely no help at all. In fact, instead of assistance, all he offers are his own faux-cute comments and vague threats of taking photos to send to Pepper.

Tony shakes his head and pouts at both of them and stumbles off towards the safety of his own room. 

\-------------

When he remerges from his room sometime after noon, he almost immediately runs into Nick. 

His godfather very obviously looks him up and down, sighs dramatically, and then tells him rather sternly to get his ass back to New York and Pepper and get some real damn rest. 

Tony guesses he must look as sleep deprived as he feels. 

\-------------

He doesn’t really want to leave Phil behind here in Medical, but he really hasn’t been sleeping well for the last week. Even less so since Pepper headed back to Avenger’s Tower. 

So he grudgingly allows Nick to bundle his belongings into a duffle bag and then doesn’t argue when he’s pulled towards the north-side Quinjet hanger. 

\-------------

Nick almost literally hands him over to Steve when they arrive, and the next thing he knows, he’s being dragged into the Quin’ and strapped into his usual seat in the back. 

Steve smirks, pats him on the head and calls him a bloody kitten _again,_ and then proceeds to ignore both Tony’s glaring and indignant growling in favour of stowing their luggage overhead. 

Clint’s already up front running through the usual pre-flight checks, and as soon as Steve’s strapped himself in, he taxis out on to the launch pad and sets in a course for New York. 

\-------------

16:52, Avenger’s Tower, New York

Clint touches the Quin’ down on the landing pad atop the tower with his usual skilled ease. 

As soon as the engines have powered down, Pepper steps out of the building, smiles, and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her right ear.

Tony’s heart skips another goddamn beat dammit.

\-------------

He does precisely nothing productive that evening, choosing instead to curl up in front of the TV with a film, his arm around Pepper and Bruce asleep leaning on his other shoulder. 

'Tasha and Clint are sat sprawled out on the other couch, Steve laid on his stomach by their feet; he’s got his DS propped up in front of him, and he’s tapping away furiously with the stylus. 

Tony’s phone pings once, and he fishes it out of his pocket and opens it to find a picture from Nick. In it, Phil is scowling darkly at the camera, a tub of orange jello clasped in one hand and a green plastic lightsabre spoon in his other. Nick has captioned it with “he’s such a ray of sunshine!”

Tony smiles, passes the phone and picture to Pepper and sighs happily, content that the world is finally more or less back on track. 

\-------------

1st August, 08:45

Having finally gotten some half decent sleep overnight, Tony resolves to spend his morning with Bruce and explain to him what’s what with regards to his childhood and secrets. 

All the other Avenger’s already know by this point anyway, so it’s a bit unfair to leave Bruce as the only one in the dark. 

\-------------

He finds the other scientist in the main kitchen reading the latest edition of Nature over a bowl of bran flakes. 

Tony shimmies up on to a stool next to him, and props his head on Bruce’s shoulder so that he can see whatever article he’s so engrossed in too.

“The hidden teeth of sloths: evolutionary vestiges and the development of a simplified dentition, by Hautier et al. Sounds fascinating Bruce.”

Bruce pushes his glasses up his nose, flicks the page over, and carries on reading silently.

Tony pouts dramatically, and rubs his forehead against the top of Bruce’s ear. 

Bruce continues to ignore him. 

Tony hugs Bruce sideways and opens his mouth to ask why sloths are so interesting.

Bruce shoves a spoonful of milk and bran in Tony’s mouth before he can get a single word out.

\-------------

Once Bruce has finished his cereal and read through a few more publications, Tony manages to drag him through to an empty side room and sit him down at a low table.

Pulling up a chair next to him, he starts off by telling Bruce that he’s a bit more involved with S.H.I.E.L.D than most people think.

Bruce furrows his brow and says “yes…?” as if he’s not sure where Tony’s going with this.

Tony continues on to give a basic outline of his relationship with Jarvis and Nick.

Bruce continues to look mildly confused.

Next he starts to explain his extensive martial arts and gymnastics training.

Bruce cuts him off before he finishes.

\-------------

“Tony, why are you explaining this to me? I already know it all?”

Tony gapes like a fish for a good few seconds before managing to ask “how?”

\-------------

Bruce seems to think it was obvious from the start.

He tell Tony that a lot of things convinced him early on that there was more to him than meets the eye:

He walks and moves just as quietly, precisely and effortlessly as Natasha does.

He’s constantly aware of his surroundings in the same casually hyper-alert manner that Clint always is.

He has reaction speeds that rival Steve’s.

He performs aerial acrobatics in his suit with an ease than can only be born of years of practice. 

His left eye has a nearly imperceptible twitch that only appears when someone refers to Howard Stark as Tony’s father (it does? He’ll have do something about a tell as revealing as that).

Fury is about as subtle as an adamantium shovel to the face when it comes to Tony and his care for his wellbeing. The blatant favouritism is unmissable apparently.

For someone with a large electromagnetic shoved straight into his chest, he’s exceptionally fit and healthy. Hell, he’s exceptionally fit and healthy full stop!

There’s a whole lot more that Bruce lists off (ranging from his flexibility to his extremely high pain tolerance), but he finishes off with a simple shrug and a “I thought everyone knew”.

\-------------

Tony’s not sure if he really is that obvious, or if Bruce is just far more observant than most. Given that Bruce is the only one who seems to have worked it out by himself, Tony’s hopeful towards the latter. 

But everyone knows now anyway, so he guesses it doesn’t really matter.

\-------------

Things around the tower pretty much go back to normal in the days that follow their return to New York.

Well as normal as things ever get when you’re a billionaire superhero cohabitating with a bunch of other superheroes in a 1100 foot high self-designed skyscraper. 

\-------------

Clint spends three days nagging Tony incessantly about training.

As the bird-brain was obviously hoping, Tony eventually gives in and agrees to teach him a few throws and grapples. 

In return, Clint promises to work on Tony’s archery with him, and to spend some time planning and trying out some two person gymnastics.

\-------------

Predictably, ‘a few throws and grapples’ soon turns into ‘everything you ever learnt ever, please Boss, you’re so cool and I’ll love you forever if you could just show me this one other thing too please!’

Dammit.

This is precisely why Tony didn’t just say yes straight away!

\-------------

Tony is a self-acknowledged soft hearted fool though, so of course Clint gets himself a regular training slot in Tony’s schedule. 

Tony tells himself he’s doing it for the team and that improving the individual contributes to the whole, not because he’s a nice person or anything similarly sappy.

(No-one believes this, no matter how often or how loudly he announces it.)

\-------------

Phil video calls both he and Pepper at least once every day.

The agent is increasingly cranky about his confinement to his hospital bed as the days go by, and Tony suspects it won’t be long until he attempts to break out of Medical.

\-------------

Nick informs Tony that he’s very much aware of how grouchy Phil is becoming, and threatens him with dire consequences should he assist Phil in escaping in any way.

Tony has no idea what ‘dire consequences’ could entail, but he’s not stupid enough to find out the hard way. And so every time he speaks to Phil, he blithely ignores his pleading and begging and cheerily regales him with tales of Clint’s training instead.

Phil is not impressed.

Tony is still not stupid enough to defy his godfather.

\-------------

Tony’s first post-reveal training session with Steve is not martial arts related.

Rather, they spend a couple of hours crawling over the metal bars of the Tower’s giant climbing frame, swinging this way and that, flipping over each other, and doing hand grabs and gleefully throwing one another about.

Clint spends the rest of the day refusing to call him anything but Spider Monkey, but Tony’s in a pretty damn great mood, so he just grins at the archer every time and goes about his day with a spring in his step.

\-------------

He does of course, get to have a sparring match with Steve eventually.

But before that, he first finds himself facing off against Natasha.

\-------------

3rd August, 15:12

He and Pepper have just gotten back from an investor meeting on the other side of Manhattan when ‘Tasha slides up to them in her usual ‘appear out of nowhere’ manner.

Pepper near jumps out of her skin and playfully slaps at ‘Tasha in reprimand. 

‘Tasha smirks and catches Pepper’s wrist in a lock.

Pepper has got a comprehensive knowledge of all the basics, and a not insignificant grasp on a lot of the intermediate and harder moves by this point. So ’Tasha’s wrist grab is quickly spun into a hold-break. Followed by a jab of her knee towards Natasha’s midsection. 

‘Tasha blocks that with an almost casually dropped forearm, and brings her other hand open palmed up towards Pepper’s chin.

\-------------

Next thing Tony knows, the two women are exchanging an almost dance-like flow of blows and blocks.

Tony stands gawping at the fluidity of them both

\-------------

They’re grinning and laughing as they both enthusiastically lash out at each other and slide effortlessly around each other’s moves.

Tony’s upstairs brain may have switched off just watching.

\-------------

“…How- Wha-? Heels. Both of you. While wearing heels. Wow. Just, wow.”

Great. He’s been turned into giant blithering idiot.

He feels like such a stereotypical macho male right now, it’s almost painful.

\-------------

(It probably (definitely) doesn’t help his case that he snaps a quick video of the two and sends it to Rhodey. His best mate has been stuck out in the Middle East for some time now, and begs Tony for some entertainment at every chance he gets. Judging by the “Oh Hot Daaamn!” he gets back, the video is appreciated…)

\-------------

The two women must spot him smiling at his phone because their matching sly smirks only give him about a quarter of a second of warning before ‘Tasha’s hand grips his shoulder and Pepper’s Christian Louboutin clad foot jabs out towards his right knee.

\-------------

He ducks out from under ‘Tasha’s hand, half-steps back away from Pepper’s kick.

Twists backwards to avoid ‘Tasha’s next swing.

Gulps loudly.

Blocks the elbow Pepper throws towards his nose.

Decides to sacrifice bravery in place of saving his own skin.

Slides sideways towards the ceiling-to-floor windows.

Rolls over the back of the couch.

Darts past a wide-eyed and startled Bruce. 

And runs the hell away!

\-------------

He retreats first to his and Pepper’s bedroom and strips out of his business suit, replacing it with a pair of worn, but soft tracksuit bottoms and a loose faded Coheed and Cambria t-shirt. 

Then after a quick pit stop in the small kitchen of the penthouse to down a pint of water, he skips back into the elevator and heads to the private gymnasium.

\-------------

Unexpectedly, his girlfriend is also in their private gymnasium when he arrives.

With the two S.H.I.E.L.D. spies.

And a ruffled looking Biophysicist.

And an overly excited super soldier.

\-------------

“Okay? Did the private part of ‘private gym’ suddenly get stripped from the room’s name? Is there a particular reason everyone is invading my floor? There’s a nice big gymnasium three floors down that I built for you all remember?”

Pepper pats him on the head with a smile and tells him sharing is caring.

Then before he can turn his sad puppy eyes on her, she tells him to go gear up because he and ‘Tasha are having a best of three competition. 

\-------------

After spending all morning and a good chunk of the afternoon dealing with obnoxious and arrogant business men, he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to get involved in what will undoubtedly be a series of very intense sparring matches.

But they’re all looking at him so hopefully, he sighs and agrees anyway.

\-------------

Pepper helps him pull his shirt back off again and pads and sprays his arc reactor with the usual protective gear.

Steve watches the process with a sort of sickened fascination. Eventually he hesitantly asks how deep into his chest the Arc Rector is embedded. 

When Tony causally replies with three and a half inches, Steve goes white as a sheet, and Bruce chokes dramatically on his sip of tea and goes a little green around the edges. 

Tony reaches over to clap his fellow scientist on the shoulder, and makes another joke about ‘terrible privileges’. Bruce gives him his best I-am-not-impressed face in return, but as his irises have returned to their usual warm brown, Tony calls it a success and steps back towards Pepper. 

\-------------

He pulls his prized red and gold Kung Fu jacket out the cabinets in the back corner, tucks his trackies into his MMA boots, quickly winds some tape around his hands.

And steps into the middle of the room opposite Natasha.

\-------------

“Hey Nat, just remember that I’ve only been able to get back to serious training this last week yeah? Go easy on me maybe?”

He winks at her.

“Not a chance Tony.”

Well. Shit.

\-------------

He thinks back to the very first time he saw ‘Tasha perform a martial arts move. 

That time she used a Wushu move to throw Happy hard down on to his back.

He thinks about how he thought she telegraphed her moves a bit too clearly. 

He’s not thinking that now.

\-------------

As he usually does, he waits for her to make the first move.

He almost takes a foot square to the middle of his chest.

\-------------

He catches her boot with both hands and pivots to the left.

Throws her weight off at an angle.

Steps back.

Ducks her other foot as it spins round towards his head.

Drops onto one hand

Kicks back left foot.

Blocks right hand.

Punch right. 

Catch

Flip

Ha! Take that!

Springs upwards

Turn

No! Turn!

TURN!

Ow!

OW!

Shit.

\-------------

He escapes ‘Tasha’s double leg choke hold thing only by dropping both his hands backwards onto the matt behind him and executing a quarter-cork like back flip thing and straining all his abdomen muscles in the process

(Seriously, he has no proper name for the messed up flip he performs)

\-------------

She springs straight back to her feet and flies at him before he has time to do more than rub his hand across his stomach once

\-------------

He’s almost using more gymnastics than martial arts here.

It’s awesome!

\-------------

What he wouldn’t give for a Bo-staff or a pair of nunchucks right now!

Gods, she’s fast!

\-------------

By the time he’s eventually gets a laughing ‘Tasha pinned to the floor, he’s breathing harder than a set of forge bellows and sweating enough to fill a water bottle.

(Pepper’s always telling him that’s a gross metaphor, but he thinks it’s funny soooo…)

\-------------

After two full minutes of struggling and wriggling in vain, ‘Tasha finally concedes and yells Yield.

The other Avengers cheer from their places around the edge of the mat.

Tony rolls straight off sideways, flops onto his back and adamantly refuses to move for at least another five minutes. 

\-------------

Having now gotten a feel for her general technique, the second match goes Tony’s way much faster. 

Clint immediately starts calling for a best three out of five instead, but Nat gives him a withering ‘hell no’ look and he quiets down and scurries off to fetch them towels and water bottles instead. 

\-------------

“So is now a good time to ask if you fancy going a round with me too?”

Tony gives Steve a long hard stare for that question and then dramatically fakes breaking down in tears.

\-------------

Bruce very loudly stage whispers “I think you broke him Steve!”

Pepper dryly answers that he’s actually just hoping to get The Year’s Biggest Drama Queen award.

\-------------

Tony throws one of the small crash mats at Steve’s head when he quips that Tony needn’t put any further effort into it, because he’s been working towards it just fine by being himself. 

\-------------

4th August, 09:01

Given how tired he’s currently feeling, Tony makes and executive decision and decides that it’s perfectly acceptable to only do half of his usual morning training routine. 

Pepper goes about hers as usual, but starts cutting it down too when she realises that’s what he’s doing. 

They finish up at more or less the same time, and with matching grins, stumble off together towards the shower room. 

(it’s a very long shower)

\-------------

Clint has forgotten it’s Bruce’s birthday.

He’s frantically scrolling through about four or five different online shopping sites on his phone, pacing back and forth across the kitchen. 

As he passes by him once again, Tony notices that J.A.R.V.I.S is popping up suggestions and organising his open tabs in most to least likely idea rankings. 

J.A.R.V.I.S is awesome like that.

\-------------

Clint makes a noise that sounds a lot like a strangled cat when J.A.R.V.I.S announces that Bruce has just left his rooms.

Next to Tony, Steve chuckles before striding over to the archer and rapidly closing all but one tab for him. Clint looks so relived, Tony’s surprised that he hasn’t wrapped Steve up in bear hug yet. 

\-------------

The majority of the day is spent showering Bruce in confetti, alternatively eating barbeque food and cake, and trying to get Bruce to stop repeatedly thanking them all for his presents. 

\-------------

Just after 6pm, J.A.R.V.I.S informs Tony that there’s a Quinjet requesting permission to land atop the tower. 

When Tony pulls up the message connection from the ‘Jet, he immediately recognises Nick’s curse-laden ranting and starts lowering the Tower air defences with a chuckle.

\-------------

By the time he, Pepper and ‘Tasha have made it to the roof, Nick has gotten the Quin’ landed and the tail gate mostly lowered. 

When it finishes dropping, Nick is standing at the top of the ramp.

Next to him, sat squarely in a standard grey metal wheelchair, is a slightly smiling Phil Coulson. 

\-------------

‘Tasha steps up to the pair with a smile, shakes the directors hand, nods at Agent and then zips back towards the building to inform the others of their arrival.

Pepper leans down and wraps her arms carefully around Phil, while Tony clasps Nick’s shoulder and quickly finds himself pulled into a gruff hug too. 

\-------------

Clint is ecstatic over Phil’s arrival at the tower.

The two agents quickly ensconce themselves in one corner of the balcony, and every time Tony looks over the two are deep in conversation, Clint usually waving his arms around enthusiastically while Phil laughs merrily along. 

Despite his still too pale complexion, Phil looks happy and relaxed. 

Tony smiles to himself, glad for the both of them.

\-------------

20:17, The Tower balcony

The sun dips fully below the horizon, and Steve and Clint gleefully light the fuse of the first set of Tony’s handmade fireworks.

He and Pepper had to get special permission to launch the small rockets from the top of the Tower, but the looks on everyone’s faces when a giant Avengers logo explodes in a shower of red, white and blue sparks high above Manhattan, makes the effort and the vast expense totally worth it.

\-------------

Steve and ‘Tasha coerce Bruce into setting off the last batch himself. 

He initially tries to wave them away, but he eventually does so with a bashful smile. 

They all shout and cheer and clack their bottles and glasses together as it detonates and Phil and Nick initiate another round of Happy Birthday.

Tony laughs as he sings along, and then pulls Pepper in tighter against his side, drops a kiss on the top of her head and settles in to watch the revelry for the rest of the night.

\-------------

8th August, 11:57

Phil’s arrival four days ago signalled the end of the agent’s permanent stay in Medical. 

The conditions of his release stipulate that he attend an appointment at S.H.I.E.L.D’s New York HQ every day for the next two weeks, that he stay in his chair when not in bed, and that he stay with at least one other person at all times. 

Clint mostly takes care of the latter, Bruce the first, and the middle is enforced by whomever is around at the time.

Phil grumbles about it in his usual deadpan sarcastic manner, but he knows his current situation is better than still being stuck in the Triskelion’s Medical wing, so he doesn’t act too much. 

\------------- 

Tony is boxing in the public gym with Happy and Steve, when the sky suddenly clouds over and a few stray bolts of lightning crackle off of the lightning rod atop the Tower.

They all know what that means. 

Thor.

\-------------

The short burst of rain that accompanied Thor’s arrival has more or less stopped by the time the whole team -minus Phil and Happy- push their way out of the stairwell onto the highest level of the roof. 

Thor is not alone.

\-------------

He has Loki with him.

\-------------

No really.

Loki.

\-------------

Thor jubilantly shouts “Greetings Friends!” with his arms thrown wide as they all burst out onto the roof, but no-one is particularly paying attention to him.

The entire group’s focus is on his brother standing meekly behind him.

The mischief god is not manacled or chained up in any way.

\-------------

Tony gently pulls Pepper behind him and tries to not grip her arm to hard.

She steps up close behind him and gently taps the Mark VIII bracelet wrapped around his other wrist.

\-------------

Bruce is slowly unbuttoning the sleeves of his shirt and tucking his glasses into the breast pocket.

\-------------

Steve and Natasha have stepped up to either side of Tony, further shielding Pepper from potential harm. 

He can feel Nat loosening the knife up her sleeve as her arm moves slowly against his side. 

\-------------

Clint, flexes his arms and growls. Bruce calmly places a hand on his shoulder. 

\-------------

Thor suddenly seems to notice the tension and frowns hard. 

\-------------

“Greetings mortals. For what it’s worth, I mean you no harm.”

Clint snorts and Bruce grips his shoulder harder.

\-------------

Thor finally decides that he ought to do some explaining and that he ought to do it quickly.

In as short sentences as the Thunder God seems capable of, he runs through how he took Tony’s comments about something not being quite right during the battle seriously. 

How as soon as they arrived back in Asgard, he took his concerns to their father.

How Odin then ordered an evaluation of Loki’s mental state and self-autonomy to be carried out. 

How the royal healers had then discovered an externally linked compulsion in Loki’s mind.

How despite this, Loki had worked around the compulsion in order to minimise death and destruction as much as possible. How he had deliberately restricted the area of the battle to New York alone and limited the size of the portal.

How he was still a self-centred, mischievous brat with delusions of grandeur and an over fondness for causing other people unnecessary trouble and was someone who shouldn’t be trusted.

But how he wasn’t truly responsible for the carnage wrought during his last time within their realm. 

How they should actually lay the blame at the feet of one names Thanos.

\-------------

Thor finishes and silence descends upon the top of the Tower.

Loki shuffles.

\-------------

“So-“ Clint starts.

\-------------

“-So what you’re saying Thor, is that there’s an even _bigger_ dick than your brother hanging around in space who’s been forcing said brother into unwilling carrying out his nefarious deeds.”

“….That about summarises the extent of the problem, yes friend archer.”

“Great. Hellishly frickin’ great.”

\-------------

Tony discreetly orders J.A.R.V.I.S to keep a close eye on the Trickster and then steps forward with a loud clap and suggests that they all head inside.

No point in standing around outside in the wind after all.

\-------------

Coulson merely raises an eyebrow when the group from the roof returns to the common floor.

Loki and Thor both stop dead in the middle of the room.

“Son of Coul? But I thought you had moved from this realm to the next? How is it that you are still within this one?”

\-------------

Loki’s jaw may have dropped upon a little.

J.A.R.V.I.S sends a photo of him to Tony’s phone with the caption ‘Blackmail material?’

God, Tony loves J.A.R.V.I.S.

\-------------

Thor strides over steadily to where Phil is still sat with a wry expression, and slowly pokes the agent on the top of his arm.

Coulson quips that death has not altered his state of solidity.

Then he turns to look at Loki and sternly tells the younger God that he owes him a new tailored suit and a whole cask of Avery Mephistopheles' Stout craft beer.

Loki actually looks a mixture of confused and terrified for a moment, before frowning consideringly and then nodding emphatically. 

Tony decides they can handle their own problems and silently vows to not get involved. 

\-------------

He and Phil end up tossing a coin to decide who gets stuck with the awful job of informing Nick about their two newest house guests. 

Thankfully for both his ear drums and his heart rate, Tony wins the toss. 

Phil narrows his eyes at Tony when the quarter lands heads up, but doesn’t say anything on the matter.

Not until Tony is mostly out of the room.

Then? Then he casually comments on the layout of his and Pepper’s bedroom, the regularity of Tony’s sleeping schedule, and that his latest Taser came with quite the variety of interesting features.

Tony gulps loudly and prays that Nick doesn’t curse _too_ much.

\-------------

Despite the coin toss, they end up making the call together, with Steve hovering in the background. 

(Tony hears about the Taser one too many times and wisely volunteers to assist)

\-------------

Nick does indeed shout and swear quite a lot, but mostly he wants to know why Thor has brought Loki back to Earth if he’s been pardoned on Asgard.

Tony has to admit that he honestly has no idea.

He doesn’t like not knowing things.

\-------------

Nick is halfway through an update on the WSC situation –their plan is nearly ready for execution- when Tony suddenly has a horrifying thought.

Steve is the first to notice that Tony’s eyes have widened and that he’s gone stock still, and he immediately cuts across Nick to ask about the source of Tony’s obvious unease. 

Tony meets Steve’s eyes and says a single word.

“Magic!”

\-------------

Cursing himself for a fool ten times over, he runs over to J.A.R.V.I.S’s nearest server port and hurriedly taps out a couple dozen lines of code designed to let J.A.R.V.I.S scan everyone in the building for irregular energy patterns. 

He will just have to hope that Loki’s magic has a detectable base-wavelength.

Otherwise he could be controlling anyone in the tower, including any of the Avengers, and no-one be the wiser. 

\-------------

Oh buggering hell, he hopes Loki hasn’t corrupted him somehow.

Because then both he _and_ J.A.R.V.I.S would be compromised.

\-------------

Thankfully, J.A.R.V.I.S’s scans don’t detect anything unusual from anyone except for from Thor and from Loki himself. 

Patching together what little data they have available from May 7th, Thor’s readings seem to match those from the last time he was on Earth. So probably no interference there.

Loki’s are a lot less… frantic than before. There are considerably less fluctuations than there were previously, and what spikes there are don’t have nearly the same amplitude. It’s just calmer.

If anything, that probably indicates that Thor’s story of mind control and manipulation are correct.

\-------------

J.A.R.V.I.S also scans Nick to use as a control variable, and when he registers the same as everyone within the Tower, they decide they’re probably safe.

For now at least.

\-------------

Collectively, they decide their best option is to keep Loki in the Tower for a while, where both the Avengers and J.A.R.V.I.S can keep a careful eye on him. 

Nick opts to stay in DC just in case it turns out they _are_ all compromised; if he shows up at the Tower then it’s likely he’ll end up subverted too. 

\-------------

11th August, 21:13

Loki and Thor have been back in New York for three days now. 

Tony still hasn’t gotten a full account from Thor as to why they’re back on Earth. 

Oh, Thor’s told him plenty of other random stuff, such as how mighty he finds the beverage Coffee and how they have a drink with similar restorative properties, but an entirely different taste in his home realm. 

Or how he wishes he could visit Jane, “Whom is currently situated in the mighty kingdom of the UK, friend Tony, doing much important research work for your S.H.I.E.L.D. And thus she and her companions cannot travel to our location at this time. I spoke with her this night just passed, using one of the small black communication devices that bear your name upon the casing.”

And it’s not like he’s actively avoiding answering what Tony does manage to ask –he’s just very good at getting distracted and going rambling off on a tangent- so Tony can’t even be particularly mad at him for the lack of useful information.

\-------------

Despite everyone’s expectations, Loki hasn’t been much of a hassle really. He spends most of his day hovering around in the various rooms of the common floor, either quietly watching everyone going about their day, or with his nose in one of the many books Thor keeps bringing him from the New York Public Library.

(Thor has a library card??? How? Since when?)

At night, he vanishes with Thor down to the guest suite that Tony left empty for the older God when they were refurbishing back in May and June. According to J.A.R.V.I.S, all Loki does at night is shower and then retreat to his own room within the suite and sleep. 

In fact, about the only disturbance he does cause, is his seeming determination to befriend Clint. 

\-------------

Clint initially tries to ignore Loki completely.

So much so, that Tony starts joking that Clint should offer 101 classes in performance level Silent Treatment. 

\-------------

That lasts until the first time that Loki brings Clint food.

\-------------

Clint peers at the bowl of popcorn suspiciously.

Thor rolls his eyes and mashes a handful into his mouth to prove it’s not poisoned

And then suddenly the two gods and the archer are laid out in front of the TV together, booing and jeering at the presenters of some supernatural haunting show.

\-------------

Next thing the team knows, Clint is dragging Loki around inside the Tower vents and they’re training together every day in the archery and knife range on the main gym floor.

Even Natasha and Phil are baffled.

\-------------

Tony grudgingly admits that he might like Loki too when Pepper comes in from a stock meeting to find the two of them comparing throwing knives with ‘Tasha while mixing increasingly bizarre and colourful mocktails. 

Specifically, she arrives just as he and Loki have teamed together to force ‘Tasha into drinking the remainder of one of their more vile tasting concoctions.

\-------------

14th August, 10:16

Tony finally gives up trying to corner Thor and decides that he may as well just corner Loki instead. 

Ironically, his first opportunity to do so is when Thor is also present.

The two Asgardians are in the kitchen, both raiding the fruit basket, when he manages to ask Loki why he is here on Earth instead of still on Asgard, when Asgard is currently much better equipped to protect him from his former master.

The answer he receives contains some vague allusions to him feeling like he owes Earth and its inhabitants a debt –to New York in particular- and some more to the idea that he is best placed to make those reparations if he is in the realm in question. 

Once he’s mumbled out that, he grabs an apple and bunch of gapes and zips out of the room faster than a toppling Jenga tower hits the deck.

\-------------

Tony isn’t really sure what to make of that answer.

So he shrugs and turns to Thor instead with a raised eyebrow.

\-------------

Thor laughs heartily at Tony’s puzzled expression, and then quite happily regales Tony with the story of Loki being scolded thoroughly by their mother and being told he ought to go offer recompense for his hurtful actions in person. 

Tony chuckles too and decides that sounds like much more of a complete tale than Loki’s answer. 

Then, rather more sombrely, Thor adds that many in Asgard do not look upon Loki in any way favourably. And that he is not, and never has been truly accepted for who is in the Golden Realm. 

Thor looks rather earnest when he finishes up with a plea that the Avengers attempt to treat his brother better than his fellow Asgardians have, despite the wrongs he has committed, so that he may finally have a chance to be the best version of himself.

Tony is mature enough to admit that he actually feels a little sorry for the guy and promises that he will do his best to do so. 

\-------------

Now that he’s finally got his undivided attention, Tony also asks Thor what plans have already been made with regards to Thanos.

\-------------

Apparently they should not concern themselves too greatly with how to deal with the insane world destroyer. 

Upon hearing of it, Odin had taken the threat more than seriously and was currently organising an alliance with several races of the nine realms, as well as with a species called the Titans; a planetary system governed by a group named the Nova Corps; and an independent party currently known as the Guardians.

Thor had apparently suggested that the people of Earth (or Midgard, as he insists on naming their planet), would probably like to be given the opportunity to fight for and defend their galaxy too. But Odin was adamant that Earth was still too underdeveloped to offer any real aid or advantages, despite Thor’s (and apparently Loki’s?) instance to the contrary. 

So as it stood, the fighting would likely be over and done with before Thor returned once more to Asgard, whenever that may be.

\-------------

With this new information in hand, Tony gathered the Avengers and Co together in a conference room and contacted Nick.

As a group, they decided that they should start putting some plans into motion just in case the fighting did end up on their doorstep despite Odin’s intentions. 

First, in order to get the ball rolling the WSC needed dealing with ASAP.

Thusly, J.A.R.V.I.S immediately began the process of contacting the Council members to inform them of their new situation. At the same time, he also started dumping all of the gathered information into an open database online, and sending anonymous messages to prominent members of the press and media all over the world informing them where online they could find said database. Soon, not one Council member would have anywhere to hide; without their anonymity, they had no power. 

They’d effectively be rendered useless and the rest of the plans could be put into motion unhindered.

\-------------

Once that was complete, Nick could initiate the next stage of the planetary defence system; Project Insight.

It was quickly decided that Tony and J.A.R.V.I.S would be in charge of the programming for the three new Helicarriers directly, to minimise the chance that could be hijacked or hacked by outside forces. Hopefully they would be ready by mid-2014; even if Thanos was eliminated well before then, they were under no illusions that he would be the last being to threaten their planet. 

\-------------

In conjunction with Project Insight, Tony pulled up some basic plans he’d outlined in the weeks after the Battle of New York for a large scale satellite defence system. The individual satellites would not be as mobile, nor as fast as the three Helicarries, but they would be capable of forming an energy-based protective sphere around their planet.

The plans were still in their earliest stages, but they held a lot of potential.

On Nick’s suggestion, J.A.R.V.I.S forwards the initial blueprints to S.H.I.E.L.D’s tech department. They could complete the first draft work, leaving Tony free to concentrate on other matters until the revision and alteration process began. 

\-------------

Next up, Pepper volunteers to organise PR for both the Avengers and for S.H.I.E.L.D.

In order to become the international defence organisation that world was going to need in the years to come, S.H.I.E.L.D was going to have to step out of the shadows a bit. Not all the way -there were far too many necessary operations that had to be carried out that the public would not think well of- but enough so that they could operate effectively without being blocked by the people they were protecting. 

On the Avengers front, Thor and Loki both needed reintroducing to the world. Thor already had a pretty good reputation due to his well-documented actions in the battle of New York, but there would be no harm in bolstering it further.

Conversely, the public’s reaction to Loki was going to be a bit of a wild card. 

On the one hand, there was practically no evidence of his involvement in the actual battle in New York, and the younger god was keen to help out with bolstering Earth’s defences. On the other, plenty of people had seen and recorded his little stunt in Stuttgart in Germany. Including the part where he forcibly removed that guy’s eye. 

Pepper thinks that playing up the ‘poor magically brainwashed and tortured victim’ angle might work, but Tony’s not so sure. Perhaps it might be wiser to just keep him on the side lines for now, out of the public eye.

\-------------

Oh lord, Loki’s only been in the Tower for a week, and he’s been so amiable, the whole team is already thinking about giving him ‘official membership’

Maybe they have all been brainwashed after all!

\-------------

There’s a bit more talk about other defence plans following that. 

Steve suggests they set up a unit headed by S.H.I.E.L.D and comprised of people of various nationalities and specialities, much like the Howling Commandos back in the 1940’s. Tony promises to contact Rhodey and see about the feasibility of the idea as soon as his best friend comes off radio silence.

Thinking along the same line, Clint suggests they start training up various Air Force pilots around the globe to fly Quinjets; they’re almost as fast as regular jets now, and they’re capable of carrying around more than just the pilot.

‘Tasha and Bruce add a couple of other points, and Thor promises to acquire assistance from Asgard if necessary, and then Nick is signing off and closing the video connection.

\-------------

As soon as he steps out of the door, an entire bucket of green glitter tips over Tony’s head.

Clint cackles like a mad man, snaps a photo of Tony’s horrified face, and runs off hooting.

\-------------

Thor pats Tony consolingly on the shoulder.

“Now you understand, Man of Iron, why it is that we came to call him the Trickster.”

“…I think we ought to limit the amount of time he’s spending with Clint.”

“…That may be wise.”  
\-------------

News of the Council’s demise has made mainstream headlines by that evening. 

People from all over the world are horrified, particularly the citizens of New York who finally have someone to blame for the near nuclear disaster in May. 

Tony’s pretty damn impressed with the way that Nick, Phil, J.A.R.V.I.S and Pepper have organised it so that the all the credit for outing the corrupt group of officials goes to S.H.I.E.L.D with help given by the Avengers.

It’s a big step towards their ultimate goal of making S.H.I.E.L.D a publically acceptable organisation. 

\-------------

Later that evening, Tony is discussing Pepper’s flight plans to Japan with Happy while updating the back-up S.H.I.E.L.D databases when he spots it.

There’s a glitch in the digital archives.

At first glance, it doesn’t look like much; just an inconsequential error in the coding.

But then he notices that every time the archive refreshes, the glitch refreshes too.

\-------------

The glitch is not a glitch.

The glitch is a mole.

And it is has access to practically everything in the archive.

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like we need more Rhodey next chapter. and more Happy. 
> 
> As A Brit, it feels very strange having to type jello instead of jelly O_o  
> Also, does everyone know what 'Trackies' are, or is that another Brit-only thing?
> 
>  **EDIT** turns out, a lot of people aren't sure what Trackies are... So the link below has some pictures :)  
> [Trackies](http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/261924520812-0-1/s-l1000.jpg)

**Author's Note:**

> This Fic has not been abandoned, I promise. But I am now doing postgraduate research and I have an entire thesis to write. I will come back and finish this eventually, but I can't give you a timeline of any sort :(
> 
> I promise that editing for grammar and spelling etc. will occur after I post the final chapter!  
> until then I thank you all for being patient with me :)


End file.
